Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/30780
strategies of the women’s rights and social-justice movements of the 1960s and ’70s. To illustrate the interconnections, she describes the impact of key figures in the civil rights movement, in- cluding voting-rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and Anna Pauline “Pauli” Murray, who, as an idealistic student at Howard University Law School in the 1940s, coined the phrase “Jane Crow” to describe the impact of segregation on black women in the South. While serving on the 1961–1963 President’s Commission on the Status of Women, Murray outlined a legal strategy for challenging sex dis- crimination by states. “In civil rights advocacy she found both an effective strategic model and a compelling source of moral legitimacy for the fem- inist legal battles of her time,” Mayeri writes. Murray’s thinking drove the le- gal strategy of the new National Organization for Women—one of its founders, she cowrote its statement of purpose with Betty Friedan. Although Mayeri suggests but does not examine Murray’s class privilege within the black community, she does explore the impact of Murray’s personal life on her activism. Murray struggled with her gender and sexual identity, was the first African American woman ordained as an Episcopal priest and was a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. The breadth of her experience likely affected her tactics for challenging the social construc- tions of race, class, sex and sexuality. Mayeri, who teaches law and histo- ry at the University of Pennsylvania, shows that racial politics’ impact on the women’s movement was not a co- incidence of timing but rather the in- evitable result of ideas and individuals colliding at key moments in history. Her carefully crafted reconciliation of racial justice with women’s rights offers a template for incorporating race into ongoing feminist debate rather than letting such conversations end in painful silence. n PAMELA D. BRIDGEWATER is a professor of law at American University Washington College of Law. She blogs at www.hiphoplaw.com and hosts www.belowthelawpodcast.com. sect across the continent. Straddling cultures and nations, they try to balance where they’re from with who they want to be. Sugar in My Bowl: Real Women Write About Real Sex Edited by Erica Jong Ecco The Fear of Flying author offers actual and fictional stories that call to mind the best sex anyone ever imagined. Or had. Think sharing with best friends over brunch—if your BFFs were Daphne Merkin, Gail Collins or Susie Bright. Best of Times, Worst of Times: Contem- porary American Short Stories from the New Gilded Age Edited by Wendy Martin and Cecelia Tichi NYU Press Stories by today’s most captivating writers— Jhumpa Lahiri, Susan Straight, ZZ Packer, Aimee Bender and more—focus a personal www.msmagazine.com lens on race relations, gender issues, Hurricane Katrina and our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Children and Fire By Ursula Hegi Scribner As Hitler consolidates his power, a young teacher struggles to follow her moral com- pass while confronting an uncertain future. Hegi weaves a story about the intricacies and betrayals of family amid the escalating panic of 1930s Germany. The Chicken Chronicles: Sitting with the Angels Who Have Returned with My Memories: Glorious, Rufus, Gertrude Stein, Splendor, Hortensia, Agnes of God, the Gladyses & Babe By Alice Walker The New Press The Pulitzer Prize-winning author, raising a flock of chickens, comes to see herself as their mother hen. Walker shares reflections on her own mother, her nurturing of the chickens and humans’ relationships with animals that become food. Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love By Xinran Scribner Short narratives expose the pain of Chinese mothers who unwillingly gave up their girl babies, and provide a conduit for the women’s messages of love and apology to the daugh- ters they will never see again. A History of Marriage By Elizabeth Abbott Seven Stories Press The author of A History of Celibacy, this time tackling the “sacred institution” of matrimony and finding that it varied wildly over time and place, utilizes a wealth of resources—from the Old Testament to Jane Austen to Celine Dion. SPRING 2011 | 59