Katherine Spillar

This is a fabulous book. I can’t believe how many of the articles I remember. Great essays about the magazine and many magazine excerpts of articles, fiction/short stories, letters to the editor, etc. I didn’t read all the text in the book but I’d probably read most of it in the magazine, especially the ones published in the first decade. I’ll have to borrow this book from the library again to read the rest of it. I want to read it all but I’m still struggling with reading and it’s due back at the library and there is a long queue of holds so it’s not renewable. Great photos and images of some of the magazine covers. I didn’t know the magazine was still around but when it was new and I was in college it was a huge deal and, I think, important. This book could be seen as a coffee table book but one with a lot of substance. It would be a great book to own!… (mehr)

50 Years of Ms. is a collection that will serve many roles for many readers, from remembering why we became activists to helping with research to even just plain old nostalgia.

The articles included range from analyses of the types of things we accept because "that is just how it is" to debunking the many fabrications that have been made to thwart progress in so many areas. The one common denominator in them is, whether implicit or explicit, they are calls to action. Sign petitions, write letters, contact legislators, get in the street, and, perhaps most important, make the changes in your own life that will empower you and help empower other women. From the beginning the idea of the personal being (always) political is evident.

I found a lot of the sidebars and shorter features interesting because they are the things I likely overlooked, or at least didn't pay a lot of attention to, when reading the original magazine. The short columns with paragraph recaps of events or ideas. These, as much as the articles themselves, helped take me back to those days.

Because of my age and when I became active in the movement(s), this reminded me of the victories we won, the battles we lost (or rather, haven't won yet), and the many things we still have to work on, both within and without our movements. Just in the past 5-7 years I have read so many good books that highlight how dynamic activist groups are organizing to avoid some of the mistakes my generation made. By my age and generation, I will say that my first WGS course was in 1990, and I never had another semester (or quarter at one of my grad programs) without at least one.

I would recommend this to anyone with an interest, formal or informal, in feminist history leading right up to today's issues (which are largely, unfortunately, also yesterday's issues). From those who simply remember reading the issues as they came out to know they weren't alone in what they believed to be right, to those wanting a nice collection of primary sources that cover some of the history of feminist thought of the past 50 years.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (mehr)