The author and his unnamed co-author offer advice from their personal experiences on thirteen topics related to women and relationships.

Despite an overhaul in the 1990s, the American welfare system remains with a business model focused on the bottom line. Crafted by male-dominated legislative bodies whose members most likely never had to choose between paying the rent or feeding their kids, established policies primarily protect the popular programs that ensure politicians' re-election. This book offers a feminist perspective on the 21st century attitude toward poverty, illustrated by the words of women forced to live every day with social policies they had no voice in developing. Topics include the struggles of daily life, crime, health care, education, employment, and a discussion of capitalism, inequality, greed, and moral obligation in a free society. In the unrestrained pursuit of wealth, this work shows that America has created a vast poverty problem, making the rich richer and forcing the poor into a forgotten class.

Poetry in America is flourishing in this new millennium and asking serious questions of itself: Is writing marked by gender and if so, how? What does it mean to be experimental? How can lyric forms be authentic? This volume builds on the energetic tensions inherent in these questions, focusing on ten major American women poets whose collective work shows an incredible range of poetic practice. Each section of the book is devoted to a single poet and contains new poems; a brief "statement of poetics" by the poet herself in which she explores the forces — personal, aesthetic, political — informing her creative work; a critical essay on the poet's work; a biographical statement; and a bibliography listing works by and about the poet. Underscoring the dynamic give and take between poets and the culture at large, this anthology is indispensable for anyone interested in poetry, gender and the creative process. CONTRIBUTORS: Rae Armantrout, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Lucie Brock Broido, Jorie Graham, Barbara Guest, Lyn Hejinian, Brenda Hillman, Susan Howe, Ann Lauterbach, Harryette Mullen.

When William Chafe's The American Woman was published in 1972, it was hailed as a breakthrough in the study of women in this century. Bella Abzug praised it as "a remarkable job of historical research," and Alice Kessler-Harris called it "an extraordinarily useful synthesis of material about 20th-century women." But much has happened in the last two decades--both in terms of scholarship, and in the lives of American women. With The Paradox of Change, Chafe builds on his classic work, taking full account of the events and scholarship of the last fifteen years, as he extends his analysis into the 1990s with the rise of feminism and the New Right. Chafe conveys all the subtleties of women's paradoxical position in the United States today, showing how women have gradually entered more fully into economic and political life, but without attaining complete social equality or economic justice. Despite the gains achieved by feminist activists during the 1970s and 1980s, the tensions continued to abound between public and private roles, and the gap separating ideals of equal opportunity from the reality of economic discrimination widened. Women may have gained some new rights in the last two decades, but the feminization of poverty has also soared, with women constituting 70% of the adult poor. Moreover, a resurgence of conservatism, symbolized by the triumph of Phyllis Schlafly's anti-ERA coalition, has cast in doubt even some of the new rights of women, such as reproductive freedom. Chafe captures these complexities and contradictions with a lively combination of representative anecdotes and archival research, all backed up by statistical studies. As in The American Woman, Chafe once again examines "woman's place" throughout the 20th century, but now with a more nuanced and inclusive approach. There are insightful portraits of the continuities of women's political activism from the Progressive era through the New Deal; of the contradictory gains and losses of the World War II years; and of the various kinds of feminism that emerged out of the tumult of the 1960s. Not least, there are narratives of all the significant struggles in which women have engaged during these last ninety years--for child care, for abortion rights, and for a chance to have both a family and a career. The Paradox of Change is a wide-ranging history of 20th-century women, thoroughly researched and incisively argued. Anyone who wants to learn more about how women have shaped, and been shaped by, modern America will have to read this book.

North American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Beyond Lyric and Language is an important new addition to the American Poets in the 21st Century series. Like the earlier anthologies, this volume includes generous selections of poetry by some of the best poets of our time as well as illuminating poetics statements and incisive essays on their work. Among the insightful pieces included in this volume are essays by Catherine Cucinella on Marilyn Chin, Meg Tyler on Fanny Howe, Elline Lipkin on Alice Notley, Kamran Javadizadeh on Claudia Rankine, and many more. A companion web site will present audio of each poet's work. Calling, Natasha Trethewey Mexico 1969 Why not make a fiction of the mind's fictions? I want to say it begins like this: the trip a pilgrimage, my mother kneeling at the altar of the Black Virgin, enthralled—light streaming in a window, the sun at her back, holy water in a bowl she must have touched. What's left is palimpsest—one memory bleeding into another, overwriting it. How else to explain what remains? The sound of water in a basin I know is white, the sun behind her, light streaming in, her face— as if she were already dead—blurred as it will become. I want to imagine her beforethe altar, rising to meet us, my father lifting me toward her outstretched arms. What else to make of the mind's slick confabulations? What comes back is the sun's dazzle on a pool's surface, light filtered through water closing over my head, my mother—her body between me and the high sun, a corona of light around her face. Why not call it a vision? What I know is this: I was drowning and saw a dark Madonna; someone pulled me through the water's bright ceiling and I rose, initiate, from one life into another.

Graham-Bertolini provides the first analysis of vigilante women in contemporary American fiction. She develops a dynamic model of vigilante heroines using literary and feminist theory and applies it to important texts to broaden our understanding of how law and culture infringe upon women's rights.

A new poetic century demands a new set of approaches. This Companion shows that American poetry of the twenty-first century, while having important continuities with the poetry of the previous century, takes place in new modes and contexts that require new critical paradigms. Offering a comprehensive introduction to studying the poetry of the new century, this collection highlights the new, multiple centers of gravity that characterize American poetry today. Essays on African American, Asian American, Latinx, and Indigenous poetries respond to the centrality of issues of race and indigeneity in contemporary American discourse. Other essays explore poetry and feminism, poetry and disability, and queer poetics. The environment, capitalism, and war emerge as poetic preoccupations, alongside a range of styles from spoken word to the avant-garde, and an examination of poetry's place in the creative writing era.

The twentieth century was a time of great transformation in the roles of American women. Women have always worked and raised families, but, theoretically, the world opened up to them with new opportunities to participate fully in society, from voting, to controlling their reproductive cycle, to running a Fortune 500 company. This content-rich overview of women's roles in the modern age is a must-have for every library to fill the gap in resources about women's lives. Students and general readers will trace the development of American women of different classes and ethnicities in education, the home, the law, politics, religion, work, and the arts from the Progressive Era to the new millennium. The twentieth century was a time of great transformation in the roles of American women. Women have always worked and raised families, but, theoretically, the world opened up to them with new opportunities to participate fully in society, from voting, to controlling their reproductive cycle, to running a Fortune 500 company. This content-rich overview of women's roles in the modern age is a must-have for every library to fill the gap in resources about women's lives. Students and general readers will trace the development of American women of different classes and ethnicities in education, the home, the law, politics, religion, work, and the arts from the Progressive Era to the new millennium. Each narrative chapter covers a crucial topic in women's lives and encapsulates the twentieth-century growth and changes. Women's participation in the workforce with its challenges, opportunities, and gains is the focus of Chapter 1. The developing role of women and the family, taking into consideration consumerism and feminism, is the subject of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 explores women and pop culture and the arts-their roles as creators and subjects. Chapter 4 covers education from the early century's access to higher education until today's female hyperachiever. Chapter 5 discusses women and government, from winning the vote through the battle for the Equal Rights Amendment, to Women's Lib, and public office holding. Chapter 6 addresses women and the law, their rights, their use of the law, their practice of it, and court cases affecting them. The final chapter overviews women and religious participation and roles in various denominations. An historical introduction, timeline, photos, and selected bibliography round out the coverage.

A powerful, urgent and timely polemic on why women still need equality, and how we get there Gender injustice is the greatest human rights abuse on the planet. It blights First and developing worlds; rich and poor women. Gender injustice impacts health, wealth, education, representation, opportunity and security everywhere. It is no exaggeration to describe the position of women as an apartheid, but it is not limited to one country or historical period. For this ancient and continuing wrong is millennial in duration and global in reach. Only radical solutions can even scratch its surface. However, the prize is a great one: the collateral benefits to peace, prosperity, sustainability and general human happiness are potentially enormous. All this because we are all interconnected and all men are of women too.

“A fine and selective anthology that’s also a critical introduction to some of the most provocative, and some of the most original, poetry out there.” —Stephanie Burt, author of Don’t Read Poetry: A Book About How to Read Poems The American Poets in the 21st Century series continues with another anthology focused on female poets. Like the earlier books, this volume includes generous selections of poetry by some of the best poets of our time as well as illuminating poetics statements and incisive essays on their work. This unique organization makes these books invaluable teaching tools. Broadening the lens through which we look at contemporary poetry, this new volume extends its geographical net by including Caribbean and Canadian poets. Representing three generations of women writers, among the insightful pieces included in this volume are essays by Karla Kelsey on Mary Jo Bang’s modes of artifice, Christine Hume on Carla Harryman’s kinds of listening, Dawn Lundy Martin on M. NourbeSe Phillip (for whom “english / is a foreign anguish”), and Sina Queyras on Lisa Robertson’s confoundingly beautiful surfaces. In addition, a companion website presents audio of each poet’s work.