A fascinating history of a unique, consciousness-raising feminist organization.
Allen and Cohen tell the story of a grassroots operation to expand the knowledge of women’s history through the circulation of accessible art.
In 1972, journalist Nancy Poore and artist Jocelyn Cohen met in Los Angeles, where they formed a romantic relationship. Poore and Cohen shared a desire to tell the stories of women throughout history via art that could be easily accessed by everyone—and to make a living by doing so. They began an artistic and business partnership in 1973 when they founded the Helaine Victoria Press, a lesbian, feminist small press that published postcards (as well as other ephemera) relating women’s narratives taken from history. Allen and Cohen lead readers through the story of the press from its inception until its folding in 1990, contextualizing the activities of Poore and Cohen within the movement of second-wave feminism while giving an overview of the art of letterpress printing. This history includes 100 images that allow readers not only to follow the journey of Helaine Victoria Press but also, and more importantly, to examine the feminist postcards they circulated. The images also emphasize the diversity of the women represented, a priority of the press’ founders. At times, the intense detail in which each postcard series is considered can be overwhelming to the reader. Still, the anecdotes about connecting with descendants of the women depicted in the postcards—particularly in the case of Alfreda Duster, the daughter of Ida B. Wells-Barnett—demonstrate the impact of the project and the wide-ranging contributions of others. One might not think of postcards as an obvious educational tool, but this work makes it clear that “the cards were, in short, history recovered in the service of generating feminist memory.”
A fascinating history of a unique, consciousness-raising feminist organization.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2023
ISBN: 9781643150352
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Lever Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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