Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (34 page)

 

Gwendolyn D. Pough
is currently an assistant professor of women’s studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus. She completed her B.A. in English at William Paterson University in New Jersey, her M.A. in English at Northeastern University in Boston, and her Ph.D. in English at Miami University of Ohio. She is currently working on a book-length project that explores black womanhood, hip hop culture and the public sphere.

 

Lourdes-marie Prophete
is a graduate of East Flatbush, Brooklyn, and Bryn Mawr College, in Pennsylvania. Existing in sites of fringe and tech e-space, she makes film/video and Web spaces with a community focus. Her work combines anthropology with media and has helped enfranchise the thoughts and ideas of communities from New York to New Delhi. She is excited to have this opportunity to share her thoughts in print.

 

Sirena J. Riley
is a graduate of the Women’s Studies program at the University of Maryland-College Park. She has been a campus organizer at the Feminist Majority Foundation and currently codirects the Campus Leadership Program. When not traveling across the country working for women’s equality, Sirena is a jazz singer who doesn’t want to sing jazz, exactly. A huge Prince fan who owns twenty-six of his CDs, she has been inconsolable since she found out that he decided to become a Jehovah’s Witness.

 

Almas Sayeed
is a senior at the University of Kansas majoring in philosophy, international studies and women’s studies. Her academic interests include women’s relationship to nationalism, revolution and the state. She recently returned from Birzeit University, in the West Bank, Palestine, where she studied Arabic and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. After graduation, Almas hopes to pursue a graduate degree (or get a job!) in a field related to international women’s development. She is forever indebted to family, good friends and housemates who have served as patient sounding boards, phenomenal editors and invaluable advice givers.

 

Tanmeet Sethi
resides in Seattle, where she divides her time between writing, activism and a career as a family physician. She is the cofounder of CHAYA, an organization created to empower South Asian women in crisis around domestic violence, and remains an active board member. Her main interests in medicine are serving marginalized communities, integrative medicine and maternal-child health. Her work has been anthologized in
The Unsavvy Traveler
(Seal Press, 2001).

 

Taigi Smith
is an essayist and television producer who grew up in San Francisco but now makes her home in Brooklyn, New York. She immortalizes her memories through words, and writes to breathe life into stories that beg to be told. She is a storyteller and a traveler, a woman who is obsessed with making her life experiences a tangible part of American history. Her essays have appeared in
Listen Up: Voices of the Next Feminist Generation
(edited by Barbara Findlen, Seal Press, 2001),
Testimony: Young African-Americans on Self-Discovery and Black Identity
(edited by Natasha Tarpley, Beacon Press, 1995) and
Step into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature
(edited by Kevin Powell, Wiley, 2000) as well as in such periodicals as the
San Francisco Chronicle
and
New York Newsday.

 

Born and raised in California,
Patricia Justine Tumang
left the West Coast in 1998 to pursue her college education in New York City. She received a B.A. in cultural studies with a path in Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonialism from Eugene Lang College in 2001. Her commitment to antiracist feminism from a queer Filipina-American perspective permeates her life and writing. This is her first published essay.

 

 

Cristina Tzintzún
currently lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she avoids attending college by any means necessary, after going for three days that reminded her why she hates school. In her spare time she enjoys reading, *riding her bike*, making yummy vegan food and hiding from vicious yuppie neighbors when she goes swimming at the quarry.

 

Lisa Weiner-Mahfuz
is a community activist who has spent the past ten years doing antioppression organizing and training in various movements for social justice. Originally from the New England area, she now lives in Washington, D.C., with her partner of three years.

Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation
edited by Barbara Findlen. $16.95, 1-58005-054-9. This newly revised edition with eight new essays features the voices of today’s young feminists. Topics include racism, sexuality, identity, AIDS, revolution, abortion and much more.

Body Outlaws: Young Women Write About Body Image and Identity
edited by Ophira Edut, foreword by Rebecca Walker. $14.95, 1-58005-043-3. Filled with honesty and humor, this groundbreaking anthology offers stories by women who have chosen to ignore, subvert or redefine the dominant beauty standard in order to feel at home in their bodies.

Sex and Single Girls: Straight and Queer Women on Sexuality
edited by Lee Damsky. $16.95, 1-58005-038-7. In this potent and entertaining collection of personal essays, women lay bare pleasure, fear, desire, risk—all that comes with exploring their sexuality. Contributors write their own rules and tell their own stories with empowering and often humorous results.

Cunt: A Declaration of Independence
by Inga Muscio. $14.95, 1-58005-015-8. An ancient title of respect for women, “cunt” long ago veered off the path of honor and now careens toward the heart of every woman as an expletive. Muscio traces this winding road, giving women both the motivation and the tools to claim “cunt” as a positive and powerful force in the lives of all women.

Shameless: Women’s Intimate Erotica
edited by Hanne Blank. $14.95, 1-58005-060-3. Diverse and delicious memoir-style erotica by today’s hottest fiction writers.

Young Wives’ Tales: New Adventures in Love and Partnership
edited by Jill Corral and Lisa Miya-Jervis, foreword by bell hooks. $16.95, 1-58005-050-6. Wife. The term inspires ambivalence in many young women, for a multitude of good reasons. So what’s a young, independent girl in love to do? In a bold and provocative anthology, 20 and 30somethings attempt to answer that question, addressing who the wedding is really for, how to maintain one’s individuality and the diversity of queer unions.

Breeder: Real-Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers
edited by Ariel Gore and Bee Lavender, foreword by Dan Savage. $16.00, 1-58005-051-4. From the editors of
Hip Mama,
this hilarious and heartrending compilation creates a space where Gen-X moms can dish, cry, scream and laugh. With its strength, humor and wisdom,
Breeder
will speak to every young mother, and anyone who wants a peek into the mind and spirit behind those bleary eyes.

Seal Press publishes many books of fiction and nonfiction by women writers. Please visit our Web site at
www.sealpress.com
.