Susan: I've always liked reference books (I am, after all a librarian). When I was growing up, one of my favorite books was the Girl Guides Handbook (when we were in Canada) & later the Girl Scouts Handbook. I went back & read those even after I stopped doing the scouting thing. They were nice reference for all sorts of random things that struck my fancy & I could sit down & read a little bit then wander off to play & use what I just learned about (or not). --read more >>

Is acknowledging the biological divide key to achieving equality between the sexes?

When I went to college in the 1980s, I hadn’t yet figured out where I stood on the issue of abortion. I’d led a sheltered life as a high school student and didn’t know of any friends who had terminated a pregnancy. The issue was very abstract for me.

Then, as a freshman, I attended a pro-life film featuring young women who spoke about boyfriends or older family members who had pressured them to have their abortions. Later, these women found themselves filled with sadness and remorse, emotions that led them to join the pro-life movement. After watching the testimony of these girls, I returned to my dormitory and asked the boy I was dating what he would do if I became pregnant and chose not to abort. Without any hesitation, he said that he would leave me. --read more >>

When I first found out I was to become a father, I was curious if there were any good books on fatherhood out there. Perhaps I was a little envious of my wife, who seemingly had a mountain of interesting, truthful, down-to-earth books on motherhood -- The Hipmama Survival Guide, The Mother Trip, Mothers Who Think, The Big Rumpus, and many others. I read all of these, but I wanted something of my own, something that talked about fatherhood in the language and experience of the world I lived in. But all I could find was Bill Cosby’s Fatherhood and related titles, and while I don’t have anything against the Coz, he just ain’t my style. He didn’t speak to me. --read more >>

How Can They Make History So Boring? Emma Goldman, May Day, and The American Experience

by Gordon Edgar

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Mamaphiles
by Lindsey Campbell-Rock

An avid zine reader in my teen years, I was excited to learn about the mama zine scene. Frankly I’m a little slow when it comes to the world of alterna-parenting, I didn’t realize that any mama zines existed, until I stumbled upon Hip Mama last year. My daughter was nearly one year old when this whole sub-culture was opened up to me. Upon discovering Mamaphonic.com, I was delighted to see zines, zines and more zines. I’ve been collecting and savoring all sorts now, for the better part of a year. With so many zines to choose from, it is quite the task figuring out which to order, what the essence of each is. Each writer has such a unique voice; it is so exciting to read what all these other mamas have to say. --read more >>

A review of Soha Bechara's Resistance: My Life for Lebanon,
translated by Gabriel Levine
By Laura Fokkena

In 1988, Soha Bechara bought some Jane Fonda workout tapes in preparation for her new job as personal aerobics instructor to the wife of Antoine Lahad, chief of militia in charge of Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon, a job Bechara took with the clandestine intention of assassinating her boss's husband. The image of this twenty-year-old Lebanese revolutionary, revolver in her purse, using a mixture of French and Arabic to talk about building the abdominal muscles while Hanoi Jane does jumping jacks in the background has to be one of the most compelling -- if bizarre -- representations of war, occupation, and the surrealism of postcolonialism to emerge in the last decade. Eventually Bechara would put two bullets in Lahad's chest. He lived, but her act earned her ten years in a Lebanese prison.--read more >>