Mordant Belle

Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild
by Deborah Siegel, 2007, Pallgrave Macmillan, 240 pages
Mel’s Reading Status: READ

Commentary:
This book was assigned as a textbook in my “Sex, Power, and Politics” Women’s Studies class, and I loved it. Deborah Siegel does a great job of describing the history of the “mainstream” feminist movement, the one that immediately springs to mind when you hear the words “suffrage”, “women’s rights” or “women’s liberation”.* Which most people think they have a pretty good grasp on, and which most people really don’t.

And don’t discount the importance of history; as Siegel points out, many young feminists like me end up reinventing the wheel all over again because we know so little about the reality of this movement that has completely and utterly impacted every area of our lives. When the progress feminism made begins to break down, or when we seek to raise our consciousness or explore our sexuality, we do so without realizing that the trails have been blazed before, and we could learn from seeing where they went, rather then trying to break new ground to end up in the same place.

Reading this book, in combination with my amazing professor’s wealth of knowledge, helped me understand the real history of feminism, where it’s been, where it’s broken down, where it’s been effective and where there is still work to do. I especially love the list of links and resources in the back. As far as I’m concerned this is required reading for anyone who is interested in feminism, but most especially for anyone interested in making feminism part of their activism and daily life.

Additional Comments always welcome.

* I say mainstream because there is/was actually an equally powerful, and some argue more effective, feminist movement among communities of people of color, both before, during, and after the rise of the second wave. Siegel touches on this briefly, and I actually learned quite a bit from her about the movement of women of color, but that’s mostly because I was completely and utterly ignorant that there WAS such a movement, so her few paragraphs were a revelation. She makes clear in her introduction that her book that her history is not meant to address the issues, progress, and history of the feminist movement in communities of people of color.

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Up until last month, I worked at *local video rental store*, in what’s known locally as a “ghetto”, though it wasn’t really one - just a run-down, poor area, where lots of our customers were black, Latino/a, and rural white folks. I always closed, which meant that I was there til midnight or 1am

Sam worried for my safety all the time, for which I appreciated his concern, but I got increasingly annoyed that every day I worked, he would fret about my car being broken into or stolen, or my being assaulted/kidnapped/raped in the parking lot. Every day he would say something about it, and say, half serious, half in jest, that he would come escort me home.

This despite the fact that I repeatedly told him I felt quite safe at work - I knew the security guard assigned to the area, a short, middle-aged, fast talking black woman who was possibly the sweetest person I ever met, and who checked in with all the staff (most of us were in our early 20s) frequently.

I also trusted all my coworkers - we were all friends and we all watched out for each other. I frequently drove some of the guys home who only had skateboards or whose family had only one car, so they had to wait for their mom. My car is a piece of shit 2000 Saturn anyway, damaged by an accident that I didn’t fix. I hated that he would go on and on that I was in danger and my car was in danger, when I knew I was safe.

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