Manifesta (20th Anniversary Edition, Revised and Updated with a New Preface)
Young Women, Feminism, and the Future
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
The twentieth anniversary release of a groundbreaking feminist text: a powerful indictment of the current state of feminism, and a passionate call to arms
Today, people of all genders strive to uphold the goals of feminism and proudly embrace the term, but the movement itself is often beset with confusion and questions. Does personal empowerment happen at the expense of politics? Is feminism for the few—or does it speak to the many as they bump up against daily injustices? What does it mean to say "the future is female"?
In 2000, Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards’s Manifesta set out to chronicle the feminism of their generation. They brilliantly revealed the snags in various hubs of the movement—from antipathy to the term itself to the hyped hatred of feminism’s imperfect spokespeople—and showed that these snags had not imperiled the feminist cause. The book went on to inspire a new generation of readers and has become a classic of contemporary feminist literature.
In the decades since Manifesta was published, the world has changed in ways both promising and terrifying. This twentieth anniversary edition of Manifesta features an updated bibliography, timeline, and resources, as well as a new introduction by the authors. Expertly unpacking both early women’s history and the Third Wave feminism that seeded the active righteous intersectionality we see today, Manifesta remains an urgent and necessary tool to make sense of our past, present, and future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Two youthful alumnae of Ms. magazine present not a manifesto, but a talky defense of contemporary feminism, directed in part at disappointed Second Wave foremothers. Arguing that feminism is already all around us, the heart of the book is a long, unbridled paean to tough and sexy "girlie culture," as represented by Xena, Ally McBeal, the Spice Girls and little girls wearing Mia Hamm jerseys. Sporting green nail polish and Hello Kitty lunchboxes isn't infantile, the authors declare, but a "nod to our joyous youth." At the same time, they caution young women not to stop and rest on the success of cultural feminism, but to develop political lives and awareness. The book suffers mightily from its determined evenhandedness; Baumgardner and Richards typically temper any negative comments with an immediate positive note, and vice versa. Whether this feminist duo's ambivalence reflects schisms in the movement, their own fear of offending other feminists or simply the awkwardness of joint authorship, the result is shallow, both as a critique and a call to arms. Analysis of the few Third Wavers who are already visible in the media ought to have been surefire; instead, the chapter "Who's Afraid of Katie Roiphe?" comes too late (after 200-odd pages) and is too tame and indecisive--the authors pointedly clamp down on their own irritation with Roiphe, referring to her simply as a "controversial" figure among left-wing feminists. Fewer history lessons and more pique might have given this book more force.
