This book is an action : feminist print culture and activist aesthetics

265 Pages·2016·2.3 MB·English

by  Jaime Harker

This ook is an ction
Feminist Print Culture and Activist esthetics
edited by:
Jaime Harker & Cecilia Konchar arr
This Book
Is an Action
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This Book
Is an Action
Feminist Print Culture
and Activist Aesthetics
Edited by
Jaime Harker and
Cecilia Konchar Farr
University of Illinois Press
Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield
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© 2016 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
1 2 3 4 5 c p 5 4 3 2 1
∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
This book is an action: feminist print culture and activist
aesthetics / edited by Jaime Harker and Cecilia Konchar
Farr.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-252-03980-5 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-252-08134-7 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-252-09790-4 (e-book)
1. American literature—Women authors—History
and criticism. 2. Feminism and literature—United
States—History—20th century. 3. Women—United
States—Intellectual life—20th century. 4. Second-
wave feminism—United States. 5. Publishers and
publishing—United States—History—20th century.
6. Books and reading—United States—History—20th
century.
I. Harker, Jaime, editor. II. Farr, Cecilia Konchar, 1958-
editor.
ps228.f45t48 2016
810.9'352042—dc23 2015019098
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For our mothers
Donna June Harker and Grace Kurtz Konchar
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Part I
1. Feminist Publishing/Publishing Feminism:
Experimentation in Second-Wave Book Publishing 23
Jennifer Gilley
2. A Revolution in Ephemera: Feminist Newsletters
and Newspapers of the 1970s 46
Agatha Beins
3. “What Made Us Think They’d Pay Us for Making a Revolution?”
Women in Distribution (WinD), 1974–1979 66
Julie R. Enszer
4. Closely, Consciously Reading Feminism 87
Yung-Hsing Wu
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Part II
5. “The Element That Shaped Me, That I Shape by Being In”:
Alternative Natures in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing
and The Edible Woman 113
Jill E. Anderson
6. The Second-Wave Sandbox: Anne Roiphe’s
Monstrous Motherhood 130
Lisa Botshon
7. Desire and Fantasy in Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying 149
Jay Hood
8. Coming Out and Tutor-Text Performance
in Jane Chambers’s Lesbi-Dramas 163
Jaime Cantrell
9. Creating a Nonpatriarchal Lineage in Bertha Harris’s Lover 188
Laura Christine Godfrey
10. The Color Purple and the Wine-Dark Kiss of Death:
How a Second-Wave Feminist Wrote
the First American AIDS Narrative 205
Phillip Gordon
11. “This Really Isn’t a Job for a Girl to Take on Alone”: 
Reappraising Feminism and Genre Fiction
in Sara Paretsky’s Crime Novel Indemnity Only 226
Charlotte Beyer
Contributors 245
Index 249
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Acknowledgments
As a Master’s student at Brigham Young University, Jaime took a class from Ce-
cilia Konchar Farr and learned about academic feminist literary criticism. That
meeting started an ongoing conversation that has continued over two decades,
through two books, cross-country moves, new jobs, and break-ups (personal
and institutional). This Book Is an Action is a testament to the power of friend-
ship and feminist sisterhood. Jaime is grateful to have a sustaining mentor and
writing partner.
Jaime wants to thank the department of English and the College of Liberal
Arts at the University of Mississippi for supporting her travel to the Naiad Press
archive at the San Francisco public library and the Sallie Bingham archives at
Duke University, as well as to St. Paul, Minnesota, to work on this manuscript
in person. She also wants to thank the students in two graduate seminars, “Aes-
thetics of Protest” and “The Queer South,” in which we discussed many of the
issues that made it into our introduction. Many thanks for the support of fam-
ily, friends, and pets. Special thanks and love to Dixie Grimes.
Cecilia is beholden (most beholden) to Jaime for the compelling decades-
long conversation that led to this book. Here is to the promise of more convers-
ing, scheming, traveling, and collaborating ahead. Cecilia could not ask for a
better colleague and friend. Next time, though, she would like to do Oxford
in December and St. Paul in August, instead of the other way around.
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