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I PROMISE I WON'T SAY "HERSTORY": NEW CONVERSATIONS AMONG FEMINISTS.

Article Excerpt
Jessica Valenti, FULL FRONTAL FEMINISM: A YOUNG WOMAN'S GUIDE TO WHY FEMINISM MATTERS. Berkeley, CA: Seal, 2007. 271 p. pap., $15.95, ISBN 978-1580052016.

Deborah Siegel, SISTERHOOD, INTERRUPTED: FROM RADICAL WOMEN TO GRRLS GONE WILD. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 224p. bibl. index, pap., $14.95, ISBN 978-1403982049.

Anita Harris, ed., NEXT WAVE CULTURES: FEMINISM, SUBCULTURES, ACTIVISM. New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2008. 283p. bibl. index, pap., $34.95, ISBN 978-0415957106.

[We] decided to write a paper in conversation with each other.

--Chilla Burlbeck & Anita Harris, Next Wave Cultures, p.221

In the introduction to "Feminism, Youth Politics and Generational Change," their chapter in Next Wave Cultures, Chilla Burlbeck and Anita Harris discuss their individual interpretations of "data sets" about young women, using their own geographic, cultural, and theoretical frameworks. Discovering their collaborative manner of writing was delightful for us as we began our process of reading and reflecting for Feminist Collections. Although we aren't sure how Harris and Burlbeck communicated, our correspondence was dictated by geography. Separated by hundreds of miles, we corresponded by email and discussed these works in real time via instant messaging. As reviewers, we share many commonalities. We are both academic librarians. We're twenty-seven years old. We are from the Midwest. Perhaps most importantly, we identify as feminists.

In spite of our similarities, we hope that our conversation will present varied reactions to the works that we have both read. We also hope that as young feminists, we can present a perspective that is sometimes missing in discussions about the generational debates that are presented in the works reviewed here. What follows is excerpted from our conversations.

Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters sells itself as a primer on feminism, discussing topics deemed pertinent to Generation Y. The book has two objectives: to get young women to embrace feminism as a hip movement vital to their wellbeing and to provide a refresher course for out-of-the-closet feminists.

Alycia: I enjoyed reading Full Frontal Feminism on the train. It was easy to put down and pick up again, and I flew through it. Overall, the tone of the work felt like an informal conversation with a cool older sister who was trying to convince you why it's important to be a feminist.

Jannelle: Full Frontal Feminism was a pleasant read, but I had difficulty determining the audience. At first I thought the book was for college-aged women, because in Chapter 2, Valenti argues that it is "O.K." to have consensual inebriated sex as long as the reader is aware of the myriad of issues surrounding girls who have "gone wild." However, in an interview on Alternet. org, Valenti stated, "It was a book I wish I had when I was in high school."(1) The book seems to have been written for urban, sarcastic, and witty female adolescents--women who are teen-aged Valenti clones. The consequence of such a limited audience is that women who do not fit this demographic are likely to be turned off by the sex and beer talk. I say this as a woman who grew up in the Midwest; the frequent mentions of getting drunk and having sex would have scared me as a teen. I wonder if reading this in high school would have turned me off from my emerging feminism.

Alycia: I think I would have been intrigued but...

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