You know, the best friend I ever had was a dog
It sounds like a cliche unless it's happened to you
Some days that dog was the only reason I even got out of bed
-Dan Bern, "Estelle"

Tonight, I am moved to share my feelings about dogs.

My friend T. recently asked me for a list of my favorite feminist books, to use for a book review website project he's putting together. Unable to contain myself with the joy of this task, I put together a fairly comprehensive list (though I edited it down quite a bit). It was so much fun, I thought I'd share it here. Disagree with my picks? Think I left something essential out? Comment--I'd love to hear what you think!

Foundations

1. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft (W.W. Norton and Company, 1987)
2. The Second Sex by Simone DeBeauvoir (Everyman's Library, 1993)
3. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (W.W. Norton and Company, 1963)

It's tempting to me to skip these books altogether, because I don't like any of them, but I think they are necessary as foundation if you really want to get into this stuff.

Histories

4. The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America by Ruth Rosen (Penguin, 2001)
5. Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement & the New Left by Sara Evans (Vintage, 1980)
6. Tidal Wave: How Women Changed at Century's End by Sara Evans (Free Press, 2003)
7. No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women by Estelle Freidman (Ballantine Books, 2003).

If you only read one book about feminism, the Ruth Rosen book gets my vote. It's very comprehensive, yet easy to read, and it has an amazing bibliography, sorted by subject. It's a great place to start. Personal Politics is also important, as it situates 2nd wave feminism in the other social movements of the time, which is something people are likely to miss. I haven't read Tidal Wave, but given what a good historian Sara Evans is, I can't imagine it's anything but good. Freedman is also a top-notch historian, and her book is excellent. It does a better job than the others with feminism before the 1960s.

2nd Wave
8. Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement edited by Robin Morgan (Random House, 1970)
9. Dear Sisters: Dispatches from the Women's Liberation Movement edited by Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon (Basic Books, 2001)
10. Sexual Politics by Kate Millett (Doubleday, 1970)
11. The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution by Shulamith Firestone (Vintage, 1971)
12. The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (McGraw Hill, 1971).

Of the first two, which are both document/essay collections, I'd say Sisterhood is Powerful is probably the better book, but Dear Sisters is a lot easier on the eyes and more reader-friendly. Both are definitely worth reading. The other three are all books written by activist women during the late 60s and early 70s. Kate Millett's has to do with sexism in literature, while Greer's and Firestone's are more broad-reaching.

3rd Wave

13. To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism by Rebecca Edby Walker (Anchor, 1995)
14. Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000)
15. Listen Up! Voices from the Next Feminist Generation edited by Barbara Findlen (Seal Press, 1995)
16. Cunt: A Declaration of Independence by Inga Muscio (Seal Press, 2002)

I'm not a huge fan of most of the 3rd wave writing, but I think Manifesta gives a nice overview, and I am a big fan of nearly everything Rebecca Walker has written. Listen Up! is also a primer of sorts--short, easy-read essays. There is actually a newer version of it as well, Listen Up 2 Edition, which was published in 2001, but I haven't read it. Cunt is a must-read.

Radical Feminism

17. Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism by Mary Daly (Beacon Press, 1990)
18. Pornography: Men Possessing Women by Andrea Dworkin (E.P. Dutton, 1989)
19. Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law by Catharine A. MacKinnon (Harvard University Press, 1988)

This is a category I am not all that well-versed in, but I've read Pornography, and got quite a lot out of it, and the other two books seem to be standards.

Women of Color

20. Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by bell hooks (South End Press, 2000)
21. Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks (South End Press, 1981)
22. Women, Race, and Class by Angela Y. Davis (Vintage, 1983)
23. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lord (Crossing Press, 1984)
24. Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism edited by Daisy Hernandez and Bushra Rehman (Seal Press, 2002)

I am ashamed to say that I don't know nearly as much as I should about this category. However, I can vouch for both the Davis book and Feminism is for Everybody, and I have heard nothing but good things about Ain't I a Woman. Sister Outsider is mostly short stuff, and I have read most of it and loved all I've read. Colonize This! is anther one I haven't read, but since the rest of these are older writings/writings by older women, I think it's good to include a younger perspective as well.

Sexual Minority Feminism

25. Tales of the Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation by Karla Jay (Basic Books, 1999)
26. Stone Butch Blues: A Novel by Leslie Feinberg (Firebrand Books, 1993)
27. Female Masculinity by Judith Halberstam (Duke University Press, 1998)
28. Amazon to Zami: Towards a Global Lesbian Feminism edited by Monika Reinfelder (Continuum International Publishing Group, 1996)

Again I haven't read all of these, but have heard good things about all of them. I can personally vouch for Tales of the Lavender Menace and Stone Butch Blues, and neither should be missed, in my opinion.

Beauty/Body Image

29. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf (Anchor, 1992)
30. Body Outlaws: Rewriting the Rules of Beauty and Body Image edited by Ophira Edut (Seal Press, 2003) (Formerly Adios, Barbie! Young Women Write About Body Image and Identity, Seal Press, 1998)
31. Girl Culture by Lauren Greenfield and Joan Jacobs Brumberg (Chronicle Books, 2002)

The Beauty Myth is an all-time favorite of mine, and I think it holds up well over time. Body Outlaws is more fun to read, however, and is also quite good. Girl Culture is a photo essay book, and it's amazing.

Memoirs/Autobiographies

32. In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution by Susan Brownmiller (Delta, 2000)
33. Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant by Andrea Dworkin (Basic Books, 2002)
34. Saturday's Child: A Memoir by Robin Morgan (W.W. Norton and Company, 2000)
35. Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions by Gloria Steinem (New American Library, 1992)

For my money, memoirs are the best way to get into reading feminist writers, especially someone like Andrea Dworkin. The Brownmiller and Morgan memoirs are both excellent, and Steinem's is a bit too wishy-washy for my taste, but you can't argue with her selling power or her staying power.

Misc

36. Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape by Susan Brownmiller (Ballantine Books, 1993)
37. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi (Crown, 1991)
38. Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood by Naomi Wolf (Random House, 1997)
39. Femininity by Susan Brownmiller (Ballantine Books, 1985)

These are about a variety of topics, obviously, but they are books I think are important and beneficial that don't fit in elsewhere.

In talking with a few people about Take Your Dog to Work Day, and about dogs in public in general, it's become clear that a lot of people who have issues with dogs in public places or work places really have issues with dog owners who don't act responsibly. And I can understand that. As I hope I made clear before, I think it's a necessary part of dog ownership to make sure your dog isn't a PITA to other people, at least to a reasonable degree. I also think it's part of the responsibility of someone like me, who wants to see the places for dogs in our society expand, to show how that can be done without inconveniencing anyone. In that spirit, I decided to start a list of rules for responsible dog ownership. Please feel free to add other rule suggestions in the comments--this list is a work in progress.

Rules for Responsible Dog Ownership

1. Keep your dog on a leash in public places. With the exception of places that are explicitly leash-free, like dog parks and private yards, I believe dog owners, no matter what size their dogs are, should keep their dogs leased when they aren't at home. Even if you completely trust your dog to stay right with you and you're only walking through the neighborhood, I still think the dog should be leashed. This is both for the dog's protection (particularly from cars) and for the peace of mind of anyone you encounter. Because the truth is that no matter how trustworthy you know your dog is, someone out there is going to be afraid of him/her, and it's going to freak that person out to see the dog without a leash and not under your physical control. People don't need that.

I can't get the Willard Suitcase Exhibition out of my head. I even dreamed about it last night. So this post will contain "spoilers," as it were, and I highly recommend you click the link and take a look for yourself before you read it.

Anybody who has been reading this blog for any time at all knows that I am a voracious thrift shopper (in fact, I have a whole blog archive of thrift-related posts). However, something I may have been less-than-forthcoming with here recently is that I haven't, for the last few years, thrifted much in the way of clothing for myself.

Why? Well, there is a simple reason and it's one I'm not proud of: It just got too hard. Not only did finding clothes in my size in thrift stores take forever once I passed size 14, but sifting through rack after rack of clothes too small for me made me feel bad about myself. And though there was no moment at which I decided to stop trying to find clothes for myself at thrift stores, I slowly did stop trying. I still thrift shopped as much as ever, I just bought other things.

All of this would have been fine, of course, except that it didn't translate into me not buying clothes. It translated, instead, into me buying new clothes. For the last couple of years, most of my clothes (and they are significant) have come from Ross, Target, and New York & Company. I've even ventured to Old Navy and the Gap more often than I'd like to admit.

I have kind of a moral problem with that. I've been buying clothes that were made under bad labor conditions of chemically treated fabrics, then sold for less than they would be worth under a real wage system. And I've been doing it, basically, out of laziness and inability to deal with my own body.

It needs to stop.

I just read this post by Em, and it got me thinking in a new direction for the day.

I can relate to a lot of what Emilin writes. Though I don't share her job-fulfillment or her mommyhood, I do get what she's saying about how your politics and how you wear them can change as you age. I'm no less "liberal" than I was at 22. My core personal and political values have remained very steady, and if anything, moving in a more privledged social/economic class has made me more aware of how completely fucked up our class system is. Ben Franklin would likely not be impressed by my brain, because I don't see much chance of my getting conservative before I hit 30.

That being said, I certainly wear it differently now.

Fish swim/Birds fly
Daddies yell/Mamas cry
Old men/Sit and think
I drink
Mary Gauthier

Most people who are out of their immediate post-teen years, I find, have thought some about the relationship they have or want to have with alcohol. In the U.S., booze is so culturally pervasive that people sort of have to think about it. You can decide you don't want it in your life at all, you can drink non-stop, and you can make all manner of intermediary decisions, but generally, some sort of decision is made.

I'm no exception. Actually, I've probably given more thought to alcohol and the place I want it to occupy in my life than most people have, just because I am unfailingly narcissistic.

Like a lot of people, I come from a long line of alcoholics. My father is a drinking alcoholic. Whether or not his alcoholism is "functional" depends completely on who you ask. My mother's father was also an alcoholic, though he was sober for a couple of decades before his death. And so it goes, back and back. A sad story maybe, but hardly an unusual one.

My own relationship with alcohol began with a bang when I was 14. My first drink was followed immediately by my second, third, fourth, and so on. This was followed by the only blackout I have ever had and a violent bout of alcohol poisoning. I was just melodramatic enough at that age to find the whole situation romantic. Now I just think it's stupid, of course. After that, I didn't drink a whole lot in high school. There were definitely a few times, and there was one notable time where I was stupid enough to get into a car with someone who had been drinking (luckily nothing happened), but I wasn't a big drinker. When I drank, I always drank to excess, but at that age that isn't really much of a surprise.

In college, my drinking increased (also not a big surprise). I still drank to excess if I was going to drink, but I didn't do it that often. I was around a lot of people who drank a lot, and it just wasn't for me. My tendency was not to drink on week nights, for example. It was also during this time period that my dad, who had been sober for about eight years, picked up his bottle again. That was pretty frightening. Still, I never gave a lot of thought to my own drinking. It wasn't a concern, it was just something one did.

The first day of my last year in college, I turned 21. I hadn't thought it would be, but legal drinking was different than illegal drinking. Being able to buy my own booze opened up a possibility that I hadn't previously considered--I could now drink without anyone else knowing about it. My last year of college was difficult for all sorts of emotional reasons that seem really silly now but very much were not at the time. I drank. More than I should have, probably. And I learned to drink alone. The summer after I graduated things were even worse (unemployed, broke, adrift, unrequited, all that jazz). I entered a very very stupid relationship. I drank more. I drove drunk. I was a mess.

And then I stopped. My life straightened out, and I quit drinking. For a couple of years, I quit more or less completely. My thought was that I was clearly unable to drink in a social, adult manner, so I'd be better off not to drink at all. My life didn't suffer from not drinking--I simply politely declined alcohol when it was offered to me, and that was that.

After a while, though, I started thinking that never drinking, being a teetotaler, was just as bad as drinking in excess. Never drinking was becoming more socially uncomfortable, and it was making drinking an issue, which is the exact opposite of what I wanted it to be. I didn't want to never drink, I wanted to drink like a grown-up.

So, very slowly, I started drinking again, on occasion and never excessively. Slowly, I learned to drink socially. I learned to appreciate wine, and even some beer. I went weeks or months between drinks, and still usually had only one and never more than two at a sitting. I didn't particularly enjoy drinking--I never drank enough for it to make any difference to my state of mind, and I hadn't developed a taste for most drinks yet--but I did it in a way that made it a non-issue. For several years.

In the past few years, and particularly in the past year or so, my drinking has shifted again. Several things have changed. One is that I like to drink now--I have had enough occasions to drink that I now know my preferences when it comes to alcohol, what I like (white wine, dark beer, rum-based cocktails, margaritas) and what I don't (light beer, vodka, whiskey). Another is that I have more and more successfully learned to navigate the area between totally sober and roaring drunk, and enjoy being in that area. It's a moving target--used to happen after 2-3 drinks, now happens after 5-6--but it's one I have a better and better handle on. I've also learned that there is no shame in drinking when no one else is drinking, and that there is no shame in not drinking when everyone else is. Drinking at home is fine, and doesn't have to have the ominous shades of a bottle under your bed. It is a personal decision, and that's fine.

One thing hasn't changed, though. Just like I did in college, I still really like to get drunk. If there weren't the consequences there are, I'd get drunk, past that pleasantly buzzed point to actual drunk, a lot more often than I do. Now, I get actually drunk maybe once or twice a year. I think that for an adult woman this is totally reasonable, given that my responsibilities are taken care of (which they are) and that I don't drive (which I don't). However, it comes with a warning light, always. I have to be honest with myself about the desire to drink to excess, and what that says about my personality and capacities. I know how very occasional drunkenness can slip into less occasional drunkenness. I know it can happen to me. I know I have to be careful, and that being careful requires a constant renegotiation of boundaries. Drinking and not thinking about it, about the broader consequences and what it means, is a luxury I am never going to have, and honestly, it is one that most people aren't ever going to have. So I think about it. I renegotiate. If I feel like my control is slipping, I make sure I can still stop.

What about you? Do you drink?

I am trying to put together a few of my best blog posts in a "best posts" category, for the benefit of newcomers to my blog who don't want to wade through a lot of crap to get to the few times I write something worth reading. Regular readers, do you have any ideas of things I should include in this category?

Thanks!

I've been thinking for several days about what I want to write about poverty for Blog Action Day 2008. I started writing a personal story about poverty at least 10 times, but honestly, that doesn't feel the right thing to do today. I want to actually offer a resource, rather than just talking about myself like I always do. So, being as I've had some success in the past offering lists of recommended books, I thought maybe I'd use my Blog Action Day platform to offer a brief poverty studies book list. Hope it's helpful.

1. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
   No surprise here. A lot of people consider Steinbeck's 1939 novel about the Joad family's journey to California during the Dust Bowl the best book about poverty ever written, and I can't disagree. This is a fantastic book, trite as it may be to say that, and I think it should be required reading.
2. Homecoming and Dicey's Song by Cynthia Voight
   These are children's novels about four children, the Tillermans, who, led by eldest sister Dicey, make their way across the country to find their grandmother after their mother abandons them. Homecoming gets them to their grandmother's house, Dicey's Song is about them living with her. Both books are, in part, about living in poverty, and even though I read them in elementary school, they've stuck with me. I can still remember the passage in Dicey's Song about Dicey and her grandmother eating at a restaurant and Dicey's concern at the meal's expense. Excellent stuff.
3. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
   Though this book was widely acclaimed, I know a lot of people who really didn't like it, saying Ehrenreich, even after her experiment, doesn't actually understand the working poor and makes stupid decisions and assumptions in her book and the experiment she writes about. I don't 100% disagree with this assessment, but I still think this is a brave and important book. The fact is that most people who have never themselves been poor have no idea what it's actually like, or why poor people might make the decisions that they do. Ehrenreich gives some explanations. Would I like it better if these explanations could come from someone who has actually lived in this situation and isn't just trying it on as a journalist? Sure. Do I think people would listen as well as they listened to Ehrenreich? No.
4. The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler
   Shipler's book has much the same task as Ehrenreich's, but instead of building a fictional life in order to have "working poor experiences" himself, Shipler extensively interviews a bunch of working poor families and mixes their first-person stories with an academic analysis of the life of the American working poor. The only really bad thing about this book is that it is outdated (it was published in 2004, but even since then things have changed radically, and the research was done for years before that). I'd like to see an updated version.
5. Don't Call Us Out of Name: The Untold Lives of Women and Girls in Poor America by Lisa Dodson
   This is another book built much like Shipler's, mixing first person accounts of poverty with academic analysis. What makes it more interesting to me, though, is that it addresses the interplay between poverty and gender. Again, the book's major failing is being out of date, as it was published in 1998.
6. Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
   Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina is one of the most amazing and most difficult novels I've ever read. Poverty is only one of the things its about, but it is in many ways the most salient. Just as Bone's tale of the violence of men is a call to feminism, her tale of the violence of poverty is a call to class activism.
7. The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
   Jeannette Walls' memoir is mostly about her childhood, growing up very poor with negligent and unstable parents. Walls' family was at times homeless, often hungry, and usually without running water or electricity. She recalls middle-of-the-night dashes from collecting landlords and page after page of experiences that make the reader's skin crawl. It's a hard book to read, but a good one. I only wish Walls' discussion of how it feels on the other side of that poverty, as an upper middle class adult with a world of both gratitude and guilt, was more prolonged.
8. Where We Stand: Class Matters by bell hooks
   bell hooks as written a lot about the intersection of race, class, and gender. This book is a conflation of memoir and social theory, and although it's a bit tough to read, it's completely worth it.
9. Ain't No Makin' It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood by by Jay MacLeod
   Ain't No Makin' It is one of those books that I read and never forgot. I read it for intro pol sci my first year at Reed, and I've come back to it in my mind often since then. MacLeod wrote it about the kids he encountered while working as a counselor in a program for low-income youth. It focuses a lot on way poverty is spirit-crushing even at a very young age, and on the obstacles the kids have stacked against them. Once again, this book is out of date (and out of print), but it's still a good read if you can get a copy.
10. Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class edited by Michelle Tea
    The final book on my list is an essay collection written by women who grew up working class. The topics of the pieces range pretty broadly, from discussion of class jumping to explorations of how much worse poor people are treated in day to day life.

Obviously there are a lot more books about poverty that are worth reading. These ten are just the first best ones I could come up with. Please feel free to leave other suggestions in the comments, and thanks for reading my Blog Action Day 08 post!