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Reproducing Empire shows how, for both Puerto Ricans and North Americans, ideologies of sexuality, reproduction, and gender have shaped relations between the island and the mainland. From science to public policy, the "culture of poverty" to overpopulation, feminism to Puerto Rican nationalism, this book uncovers the persistence of concerns about motherhood, prostitution, and family in shaping the beliefs and practices of virtually every player in the twentieth-century drama of Puerto Rican colonialism. In this way, it sheds light on the legacies haunting contemporary debates over globalization.
Dorothy Roberts,
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reprodution and the Meaning of LibertyBy using the history of how American law--beginning with slavery--has treated the issue of the state's right to interfere with the black woman's body, [Roberts] explosively and effectively makes the case for the legal redress to the racist implications of current policy with regards to 1) access to and coercive dispensing of birth control to poor black women 2) the criminalization of parenting by poor black women who have used drugs 3) the stigmatization and devaluation of poor black mothers under the new welfare provisions, and 4) the differential access to and disproportionate spending of social resources on the new reproductive technologies used by wealthy white couples to insure genetically related offspring.
Loretta Ross et al,
Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive JusticeUndivided Rights presents a fresh and textured understanding of the reproductive rights movement by placing the experiences, priorities, and activism of women of color in the foreground. Using historical research, original organizational case studies, and personal interviews, the authors illuminate how women of color have led the fight to control their own bodies and reproductive destinies.
Elena R. Gutiérrez,
Fertile Matters: The Politics of Mexican-Origin Women's ReproductionUsing the coercive sterilization of Mexican-origin women in Los Angeles as a case study, Gutierrez opens a dialogue on the racial politics of reproduction, and how they have developed for women of Mexican origin in the United States. She illustrates how the ways we talk and think about reproduction are part of a system of racial domination that shapes social policy and affects individual women's lives.
Karen Stote,
An Act of Genocide: Colonialism and the Sterilization of Aboriginal WomenAn Act of Genocide unpacks long-buried archival evidence to begin documenting the forced sterilization of Aboriginal women in Canada. Grounding this evidence within the context of colonialism, the oppression of women and the denial of Indigenous sovereignty, Karen Stote argues that this coercive sterilization must be considered in relation to the larger goals of Indian policy — to gain access to Indigenous lands and resources while reducing the numbers of those to whom the federal government has obligations.
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Rickie Soligner,
Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Policies in AmericaLeading historian Rickie Solinger argues that a woman's control over her body involves much more than the right to choose an abortion. Reproductive politics were at play when slaveholders devised breeding schemes, when the U.S. government took Indian children from their families in the nineteenth century, and when doctors pressed Latina women to be sterilized in the 1970s. Tracing the diverse plot lines of women s reproductive lives throughout American history, Solinger redefines the idea of reproductive freedom, putting race and class at the center of the effort to control sex and pregnancy in America over time.
Jeanne Flavin,
Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women's Reproductive RightsJeanne Flavin looks beyond abortion to document how the law and the criminal justice system police women's rights to conceive, to be pregnant, and to raise their children. Through vivid and disturbing case studies, Flavin shows how the state seeks to establish what a good woman and fit mother should look like and whose reproduction is valued.
Laura Kaplan,
The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminsit Abortion ServiceAn extraordinary history by one of its members, this is the first account of Jane's evolution, the conflicts within the group, and the impact its work had both on the women it helped and the members themselves. This book stands as a compelling testament to a woman's most essential freedom--control over her own body--and to the power of women helping women.
Helena Silverstein,
Girls on the Stand: How Courts Fail Pregnant MinorsGirls on the Stand convincingly demonstrates that safeguards promised by parental involvement laws do not exist in practice and that a legal process designed to help young women make informed decisions instead victimizes them. In making this case, the book casts doubt not only on the structure of parental involvement mandates but also on the naive faith in law that sustains them.
Johanna Schoen,
Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and WelfareSchoen situates the state's reproductive politics in a national and global context. Widening her focus to include birth control, sterilization, and abortion policies across the nation, she demonstrates how each method for limiting unwanted pregnancies had the potential both to expand and to limit women's reproductive choices. Such programs overwhelmingly targeted poor and nonwhite populations, yet they also extended a measure of reproductive control to poor women that was previously out of reach.
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Susan Bordo,
Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the BodyFrom an immensely knowledgeable feminist perspective, in engaging, jargonless (!) prose, Bordo analyzes a whole range of issues connected to the body—weight and weight loss, exercise, media images, movies, advertising, anorexia and bulimia, and much more—in a way that makes sense of our current social landscape.
Silvia Federici,
Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body and Primitive AccumulationCaliban and the Witch is a history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages to the witch-hunts and the rise of mechanical philosophy, Federici investigates the capitalist rationalization of social reproduction. She shows how the battle against the rebel body and the conflict between body and mind are essential conditions for the development of labor power and self-ownership, two central principles of modern social organization.
Rose Weitz and Samantha Kwan,
The Politics of Women's Bodies
The Politics of Women's Bodies, Fourth Edition, is an anthology covering the issues surrounding women's bodies. Threads running throughout the book include the distribution of power between men and women, how that affects cultural standards, and how those standards subsequently serve as powerful and political tools for controlling women's appearance, sexuality, and behavior. This book fills an important niche not covered by other books: focus on women's bodies, social control, and agency. The new edition includes updated readings which engage diversity and highlight cross-cultural relevance where appropriate
Emily Martin,
The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of ReproductionA bold reappraisal of science and society, The Woman in the Body explores the different ways that women's reproduction is seen in American culture. Contrasting the views of medical science with those of ordinary women from diverse social and economic backgrounds, anthropologist Emily Martin presents unique fieldwork on American culture and uncovers the metaphors of economy and alienation that pervade women's imaging of themselves and their bodies.
Helen King,
Hippocrates' Women: Reading the Female Body in Ancient GreeceHippocrates' Woman presents an arresting study of the origins of gynaecology, an exploration of how the interior workings of the female body were understood and the influence of Hippocrates' theories on the gynaecology of subsequent ages.
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Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie, Kay Whitlock,
Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United StatesThe authors unpack queer criminal archetypes--like "gleeful gay killers," "lethal lesbians," "disease spreaders," and "deceptive gender benders"--to illustrate the punishment of queer expression, regardless of whether a crime was ever committed. A groundbreaking work that turns a "queer eye" on the criminal legal system, Queer (In)Justice illuminates and challenges the many ways in which queer lives are criminalized, policed, and punished.
Thea Hillman,
Intersex: (For Lack of a Better Word)Intersex (For Lack of a Better Word) chronicles one person’s search for self in a world obsessed with normal. In first-person prose as intimate as a diary, Thea Hillman redefines memoir in a series of compelling stories that take a no-holds-barred look at sex, gender, family, and community.
Dean Spade:
Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics & the Limits of LawNormal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law raises revelatory critiques of the current strategies pivoting solely on a "legal rights framework," but also points to examples of an organized grassroots trans movement that is demanding the most essential of legal reforms in addition to making more comprehensive interventions into dangerous systems of repression—and the administrative violence that ultimately determines our life chances. Setting forth a politic that goes beyond the quest for mere legal inclusion, Normal Life is an urgent call for justice and trans liberation, and the radical transformations it will require.
Susan Wendell,
The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflctions on DisabilityThis study applies a feminist philosophical perspective to theoretical and practical issues of physical disability, such as who should be identified as disabled, whether disability is biomedical, social or both, what causes disability and what could cure it, and whether scientific efforts to eliminate disabling physical conditions are morally justified. The book also argues that feminist theorizing has been skewed toward non-disabled experience, and that the knowledge of people with disabilities must be integrated into feminist ethics, feminist discussions of bodily life, and feminist criticism of the cognitive and social authority of medicine.
Eli Clare,
Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness and LiberationEli Clare's revelatory writing about his experiences as a white disabled genderqueer activist/writer established him as one of the leading writers on the intersections of queerness and disability and permanently changed the landscape of disability politics and queer liberation. At the root of Clare's exploration of environmental destruction and capitalism, sexuality and institutional violence, gender and the body politic, is a call for social justice movements that are truly accessible to everyone.
