"Who is 'the girl'? Look to movies, TV shows, magazines, and ads and the message is both clear and not: she is a sexed-up sidekick, a princess waiting to be saved, a morally infallible angel with no opinions of her own. She's whatever the hero needs her to be in order to become himself. She's an abstraction, an ideal, a standard, a mercurial phantom. In You Play the Girl, Chocano blends formative personal stories with insightful and emotionally powerful...

Shayla Lawson is major. She is on a mission to move black girls like herself from best-supporting actress to a starring role in the major narrative. Whether she's taking on workplace microaggressions or upending racist stereotypes about her home state of Kentucky, she looks for the side of the story that isn't always told, the places where the voices of black girls haven't been heard. The essays herein ask questions like: Why are black women invisible...

This 20th-anniversary edition of the extraordinary New York Times bestseller features a new introduction from the author! In 1991, internationally renowned feminist journalist Susan Faludi ignited a revival of the women's movement with her revelatory investigative reportage: Backlash was nothing less than a landmark, uncovering an "undeclared war" against women's equality in the media, advertising, Hollywood, the workplace, and government-a war that...

"A lush, engrossing tale of love, deception and scandal in the 18th century French court of King Louis XV. Against the tumult of 18th century France, King Louis XV has tired of courtly intrigues and becomes a connoisseur of innocence. On the grounds of the Palace of Versailles lies Deer Park, a hunting ground that also offers another pleasure: a mansion where his young mistresses are housed. But when these girls first arrive at Deer Park, it is under...

In 1364 England, one of literature's most unforgettable characters--Chaucer's Wife of Bath--tells her story in her own words as she rises through society from a cast-off farm girl to a woman of fortune fighting to control her own life. England, 1364: When married off at aged twelve to an elderly farmer, brazen redheaded Eleanor quickly realizes it wont matter what she says or does, God is not on her sideor any poor womans for that matter. But then...

Sisters, daughters, mothers, wives-Marilyn French's life-affirming saga celebrates four generations of women   With Bella Dabrowski close to death, her daughter Anastasia, who has reinvented herself as Stacey Stevens, is trying to penetrate the longstanding barriers between them to understand the woman who gave her life. Through the eyes of Stacey, a divorced, feminist New York photographer, we get to know Bella, a remarkable woman, wife, and mother....

"Humans are a varied and divergent bunch with all manner of beliefs, morals, and bodies. Systems of oppression thrive off our inability to make peace with difference and injure the relationship we have with our own bodies. The body is not an apology offers radical self-love as the balm to heal the wounds inflicted by these violent systems. World-renowned activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor invites us to reconnect with the radical origins of our minds...

"A funny, edgy, comprehensive program for chronic dieters to help them escape the plague of diet culture, regain their personal power, and reboot their relationship with food, weight and self-worth. What's the one thing the $60-billion-dollar diet industry doesn't want you to know? Diets don't work. Our bodies are hardwired against them. But instead of wondering what's wrong with dieting, we wonder what's wrong with us. Diet programs earn billions...