ALSO AVAILABLE FROM FEMINIST PRESS

The Crunk Feminist Collection Edited by Brittney C. Cooper, Susana M. Morris, and Robin M. Boylorn

For the Crunk Feminist Collective, their academic day jobs were lacking in conversations they actually wanted to have—relevant, real conversations about how race and gender politics intersect with pop culture and current events. To address this void, they started a blog. Now with an annual readership of nearly one million, their posts foster dialogue about activist methods, intersectionality, and sisterhood. And the writers’ personal identities—as black women; as sisters, daughters, and lovers; and as television watchers, sports fans, and music lovers—are never far from the discussion at hand.

These essays explore “Sex and Power in the Black Church,” discuss how “Clair Huxtable Is Dead,” list “Five Ways Talib Kweli Can Become a Better Ally to Women in Hip Hop,” and dwell on “Dating with a Doctorate (She Got a Big Ego?).” Self-described as “critical homegirls,” the authors tackle life stuck between loving hip hop and ratchet culture while hating patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism.

Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms

Michelle Tea

The razor-sharp but damaged Valerie Solanas, a doomed lesbian biker gang, recovering alcoholics, and teenagers barely surviving at an ice creamery: these are some of the larger-than-life, yet all-too-human figures, populating America’s fringes. Rife with never-ending fights and failures, theirs are the stories we too often try to forget. But in the process of excavating and documenting these lives, Michelle Tea also reveals herself in unexpected and heartbreaking ways.

Delivered with her signature honesty and dark humor, Tea blurs the line between telling other people’s stories and her own. She turns an investigative eye to the genre that’s nurtured her entire career—memoir—and considers the extent to which art preys on life.

Valerie Solanas: The Defiant Life of the Woman Who Wrote SCUM (and Shot Andy Warhol)

Breanne Fahs

Too drastic, too crazy, too “out there,” too early, too late, too damaged, too much—Solanas is the infamous revolutionary assassin people love to hate or revere. She has become, unwittingly, a figurehead for women’s unexpressed rage, at the center of many worlds—Warhol’s Factory scene, 60s feminists, NY literati, the counterculture. Her life is recounted here for the first time.