New Books at Daley: Celebrating Women's History Month

From Snow White to Moana, from Pinocchio to Frozen, the animated films of Walt Disney Studios have moved and entertained millions. But few fans know that behind these groundbreaking features was an incredibly influential group of women who fought for respect in an often ruthless male-dominated industry and who have slipped under the radar for decades.

A portrait of one of the American Century's most towering intellectuals: her writing and her radical thought, her public activism and her hidden private face.

Publisher Description: For the 150th anniversary of Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic, Kate Bolick, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Jane Smiley explore their strong lifelong personal engagement with Little Women - what it has meant to them and why it still matters. Each takes as her subject one of the four March sisters, reflecting on each particular sister's story and what it has to teach us. These four voices come together to form a deep, funny, far-ranging meditation on the power of great literature to shape our lives.

Provocative, startling, prophetic, and more relevant than ever, The Handmaid's Tale has become a global phenomenon. Now, in this stunning graphic novel edition of Margaret Atwood's modern classic, the terrifying reality of Gilead is brought to vivid life like never before.

Publisher Description: The companion to the classic anthology Daughters of Africa--a major international collection that brings together the work of more than 200 women writers of African descent, celebrating their artistry and showcasing their contributions to modern literature and international culture.

Publisher Description: New feminist essays for the #MeToo era from the international best-selling author of Men Explain Things to Me. Who gets to shape the narrative of our times? The current moment is a battle royale over that foundational power, one in which women, people of color, non-straight people are telling other versions, and white people and men and particularly white men are trying to hang onto the old versions and their own centrality.

Publisher Description: In a poetic voice at once accessible and otherworldly, gutsy and insightful, U.S. Army veteran Karen Skolfield offers a rare glimpse of a female soldier's training and mental conditioning. Through the narratives of a young soldier, her older counterpart, and her fellow soldiers, Skolfield searches for meaning in combat preparation, long-term trauma, and the way war is embedded in our language and psyche.

Neglected American Women Writers of the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Verena Laschinger and Sirpa Salenius, is a collection of essays that offer a fresh perspective and original analyses of texts by American women writers of the long nineteenth century.

In Surrogate Humanity Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora trace the ways in which robots, artificial intelligence, and other technologies serve as surrogates for human workers within a labor system entrenched in racial capitalism and patriarchy.

Publisher Description: Dirty Work sheds light on the complex relationships between women employers and their household help in the early twentieth century through their representations in literature, including women's magazines, conduct manuals, and particularly female-authored fiction.

Publisher Description: This volume considers how women are shaping the global economic landscape through their labor, activism, and multiple discourses about work.

Brings together thirty-five Asian American and Pacific Islander authors in a single volume to explore the historical experiences, perspectives, and actions of Asian American and Pacific Islander women in the United States and beyond.

During a discussion of how women are treated in traditionally male-dominated fields, paleobotanist Ellen Currano lamented to filmmaker Lexi Jamieson Marsh that, as the only young and female faculty member in her department, she was not taken seriously by her colleagues. If only she had the right amount of facial hair, she joked, maybe they would recognize her expertise. The next morning, she saw a message from Lexi saying: Let’s do this. Let’s get beards. That simple remark was the beginning of the Bearded Lady Project.Challenging persistent gender biases in the sciences, the project puts the spotlight on underrepresented geoscientists in the field and in the lab.

For the first forty-four years of her life, Hamer lived on sharecropping plantations, all the while learning life lessons from her family, the Black Baptist religious tradition, and from the oppressive white supremacist mores surrounding her. Once Hamer’s life path intersected with the mid-century Civil Rights Movement, she spent fifteen years (1962-1977) traveling from the South to the North—and even to the West Coast of Africa—advocating civil rights, economic justice, and interracial cooperation. Hamer shared the platform with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, who introduced her to an audience in Harlem as “the country’s number one freedom fighting woman.”

During the 1970s, grassroots women activists in and outside of prisons forged a radical politics against gender violence and incarceration. Emily L. Thuma traces the making of this anticarceral feminism at the intersections of struggles for racial and economic justice, prisoners' and psychiatric patients' rights, and gender and sexual liberation.

This explosive book of history and cultural criticism reveals how white feminism has been used as a weapon of white supremacy and patriarchy deployed against Black and Indigenous women, and women of color.Taking us from the slave era, when white women fought in court to keep "ownership" of their slaves, through the centuries of colonialism, when they offered a soft face for brutal tactics, to the modern workplace, White Tears/Brown Scars tells a charged story of white women's active participation in campaigns of oppression.

Suffragette City brings together a collection of illustrated essays dedicated to exploring and analysing cases in which women have resourcefully leveraged or defied the politics of gender to form and reform architecture and urbanism.

This book describes the importance of carving out spaces for women in science and includes the unique strengths of women scientists as well as challenges they tend to face.

In Black Feminism Reimagined Jennifer C. Nash reframes black feminism's engagement with intersectionality, often celebrated as its primary intellectual and political contribution to feminist theory.

A potent and electrifying critique of today's feminist movement announcing a fresh new voice in black feminism Today's feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women. Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. All too often, however, the focus is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. That feminists refuse to prioritize these issues has only exacerbated the age-old problem of both internecine discord and women who rebuff at carrying the title. Moreover, prominent white feminists broadly suffer from their own myopia with regard to how things like race, class, sexual orientation, and ability intersect with gender. How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others?

In this award-winning documentary, Cecilia Fire Thunder- the first female President of the Oglala Sioux tribe, defies a proposed South Dakota law criminalizing all abortions, with no exceptions for rape or incest, by threatening to build a women's clinic on the sovereign territory of the reservation. She ignites a political firestorm that sets off a chain reaction in the lives of three young Lakotas on the Pine Ridge Reservation, forcing each of them to make choices that define who they are and the kind of adults they will become.

A feature length documentary film surrounding the double edged sword of racial and gender oppression that black women face in America. This documentary is told through interviews from scholars, lecturers, writers, business owners, veterans, comedians and authors.

Three women share a common goal: Carolina, Bertha and Maxima are leading today's fight against modern conquistadors. Whereas governments and corporations, trapped in a global race towards unlimited growth need to get the cheapest raw materials, these three women tell us a story of tireless courage: how to keep fighting to protect nature when your life is at risk?

PICTURE A SCIENTIST is a feature-length documentary film chronicling the groundswell of researchers who are writing a new chapter for women scientists. A biologist, a chemist and a geologist lead viewers on a journey deep into their own experiences in the sciences, overcoming brutal harassment, institutional discrimination, and years of subtle slights to revolutionize the culture of science. From cramped laboratories to spectacular field sites, we also encounter scientific luminaries who provide new perspectives on how to make science itself more diverse, equitable, and open to all.

Colonel Honorine Manyole, commonly known as "Mama Colonel," works for the Congolese police force and heads the unit for the protection of minors and the fight against sexual violence. Having worked for 15 years in Bukavu, in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she learns she is transferred to Kisangani. There, she finds herself faced with new challenges.

Mother Jones, a fiery orator and fearless organizer for the United Mine Workers during the early part of the 20th century, in a riveting performance by Kaiulani Lee.

A compelling documentary about lesbians who discriminate against other lesbians based on gender roles. Director Nneka Onuorah takes an in-depth look at the internalized hetero-normative gender roles that have become all too familiar within the African American lesbian and bisexual community.

In this film, 22-year-old Wang Qiong explores how her family's troubled relationships intersect with the ongoing consequences of China's one-child policy. Qiong set out to make this film as a way to investigate family trauma. Her interviews with her parents and siblings, and her steadfast eye for detail and telling moments, elevate the film from family history to a meditation on the brutal ramifications of the one-child policy at its peak.

This film offers unprecedented access to the life, work and mesmerizing performances of renowned poet and activist Sonia Sanchez who describes herself as "a woman with razor blades between my teeth." A leading figure in the Black Arts Movement and inspiration to today's hip hop spoken word artists, Sanchez for over 60 years has helped to redefine American culture and politics as an activist in the Black, women's and peace movements.

As a movement of candidates and organizers inspire voters to turn out for the 2018 midterm elections, voter suppression in Georgia casts a shadow on Stacey Abrams’ history-making run for governor.

Under the neon lights in a gay-friendly neighborhood of New York City, four young African-American lesbians are violently and sexually threatened by a man on the street. They defend themselves against him and are charged and convicted in the courts and in the media as a 'Gang of Killer Lesbians'.

Amá the story of the abuses committed against Native American women by the US Government during the 1960s and 70s. The women were removed from their families and sent to boarding schools. They were subjected to forced relocation away from their traditional lands and, perhaps worst of all, they were subjected to involuntary sterilization.

This film explores pressing issues faced by women in the culinary arts and across all industries, including sexual and workplace harassment, access to capital, unequal pay, and lack of paid family leave and affordable childcare. An uplifting American success story about perseverance, family, and food, A FINE LINE follows the personal story of Valerie James, a small town restaurateur with a larger than life personality who raised Joanna as a single mother, on a mission to do what she loves while raising two kids and the odds stacked against her.

This film celebrates legendary 98-year-old park ranger Betty Reid Soskin's inspiring life, work and urgent mission to restore critical missing chapters of America's story. The film follows her journey as an African American woman presenting her personal story from a kitchen stool in a national park theater to media interviews and international audiences who hang on every word she utters.

Features feminist thinker Donna Haraway in a playful and engaging exploration of her life, influences, and ideas. Best-known for her ground breaking work on gender, cyborgs, animals, and post-colonialism, Haraway is a passionate and discursive storyteller. The film is structured around a series of discussions on subjects including capitalism and the environment, science fiction as philosophy, the role of Catholicism in her upbringing, and the need for new post-colonial and post-patriarchal narratives.

Waring challenges the myths of objective economic policy by asking the question, "Why isn't the unpaid work of women counted in the gross domestic product?" She uses as an example the women in the Philippines. She also raises the issue as to why there is no negative costs in the national accounts for damage to the environment?

With verve and humor, this film shows the love/hate relationship that women have with the task of cleaning the family's clothes. As we see the clothes flapping in the wind and hear the voices - some proud, some angry, some wistful - we realize that doing laundry calls forth deep feel- ings about one's role in life. Some remember when their mothers and grandmothers tackled the same chores using washtubs and washboards, or even river streams. This engaging film pays homage to the commonality of women's experience.

Jabulile Ndaba is training to become a leader of a women's project in a township near Johannesburg, South Africa. The project, Kopanang, helps women earn money through sewing and embroidery - and also enables Jabulile to learn office management skills. Jabulile, a tall black woman with a contagious sense of humor, grew up under apartheid. Officially revoked 24 years ago, segregation in South Africa is more subtle and dangerous now because it has no name. Still today, teenage pregnancies, drug-addiction and massive unemployment in the township create never-ending crises.

Ifeoma Fafunwa, Mrs. F., takes up the challenge of staging her stage play HEAR WORD! about the abuse of women in Nigerian society in Makoko, a notorious slum in the heart of the mega city of Lagos, where women suffer from male-domination. Ifeoma expands the original cast of Nigeria's most acclaimed actresses with young women casted from Makoko. Will these women have the courage to face the community, to speak up for themselves and to be part of a transformation for change?

This intimate and personal documentary follows two women from Ciudad Juárez as they cross the U.S.-Mexico border legally to give birth in Texas, putting their hearts and bodies on the line as they confront harassment at the hands of U.S. border officials.

As the U.S. planned to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in September 2021, Canadian-Afghan filmmaker and journalist Brishkay Ahmed was filming IN THE RUMBLING BELLY OF MOTHERLAND. Revealing the ongoing dangers for women reporters, and the extraordinary risks they take, this film provides an in-depth look into Zan TV, Kabul's female-led news agency. A professional journalist herself, Ahmed documents both the harrowing and inspiring work of young, female journalists over the course of the two-year lead up to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

Filmmaker and scholar Celine Parreñas Shimizu artfully weaves together her own story of grief with the story of the tragic death of Celine Navarro, which has become lore. In 1932, Navarro was buried alive by her own community of Filipino-Americans in Northern California, but the circumstances surrounding her death were and are unclear and have oft been spun, sensationalized, and dramatized. The filmmaker, a grieving mother with ties to the same community, finds resonance with Navarro's memory and long-lost story, and she sets out to first learn - and then tell - the truth about Navarro's death, ultimately portraying her as a feminist heroine.

Women make up 15 percent of today's military. That number is expected to double in 10 years. SERVICE highlights the resourcefulness of seven amazing women who represent the first wave of mothers, daughters and sisters returning home from the frontless wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. Portraying the courage of women veterans as they transition from active duty to their civilian lives, this powerful film describes the horrific traumas they have faced, the inadequate care they often receive on return, and the large and small accomplishments they work mightily to achieve. These are the stories we hear about from men returning from war, but rarely from women veterans. Through compelling portraits, we watch these women wrestle with prostheses, homelessness, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Military Sexual Trauma.

Three Afghan singers fight for women's rights through music, despite death threats in a patriarchal society.