The CSUN University Library invites you to celebrate Women's History Month, with our Physical and Virtual Book Displays, and our Media Wall slideshow. Titles selected from the collection, recounts how women, both individually or as a group movement saw social injustice and worked for change through protest and activism whether for movements to gain advancements for abolition, suffrage, labor rights, reproductive rights, education reform, mental health rights, racial and environmental justice, mental health advocacy, ADA rights, Title XI, LGBTQ rights, equal protection under the law, equitable representation, gender wage pay gap improvements, same-sex marriage rights as well as freedom of religion and freedom of speech and so much much more. Women through activism have created change and helped write the story of political activism in America and worldwide.
Physical Book Display
March 3rd to March 31st
Library Lobby (Next to the Freudian Sip)
Stop by our book display located in the Library and find something to learn about Women's History. Please make sure to checkout your pick with Guest Services.
Media Wall Slideshow
Main Floor, ASRS Viewing Room, East Wing
Check out our Women's History Month slideshow powered by one of the fantastic databases the Library makes available: ARTstor.
Virtual Book Display
We invite you to explore this virtual book display to celebrate Women's History Month 2023.
Online copies of these books may be limited through the CSUN University Library, if it is unavailable you can check the Los Angeles Public Library or other local libraries near you for online access, or visit in person for physical copies.
A compelling reconstruction of the life of a black suffragist, Adella Hunt Logan, blending family lore, historical research, and literary imagination. Born during the Civil War into a slaveholding family that included black, white, and Cherokee forebears, Adella Hunt Logan dedicated herself to advancing political and educational opportunities for the African American community. She taught at Alabama's Tuskegee Institute but also joined the segregated woman suffrage movement, passing for white in order to fight for the rights of people of color. Her determination--as a wife, mother, scholar, and activist--to challenge the draconian restraints of race and gender generated conflicts that precipitated her tragic demise.
We think we know the story of women's suffrage in the United States: women met at Seneca Falls, marched in Washington, D.C., and demanded the vote until they won it with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. But the fight for women's voting rights extended far beyond these familiar scenes. From social clubs in New York's Chinatown to conferences for Native American rights, and in African American newspapers and pamphlets demanding equality for Spanish-speaking New Mexicans, a diverse cadre of extraordinary women struggled to build a movement that would truly include all women, regardless of race or national origin. In 'Recasting the Vote', Cathleen D. Cahill tells the powerful stories of a multiracial group of activists who propelled the national suffrage movement toward a more inclusive vision of equal rights.
The first biography of Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a trailblazing Black feminist activist whose work made children, race, and welfare rights central to the women’s movement.
Dorothy Pitman Hughes was a transformative community organizer in New York City in the 1970s who shared the stage with Gloria Steinem for 5 years, captivating audiences around the country. After leaving rural Georgia in the 1950s, she moved to New York, determined to fight for civil rights and equality. Historian Laura L. Lovett traces Hughes’s journey as she became a powerhouse activist, responding to the needs of her community and building a platform for its empowerment. She created lasting change by revitalizing her West Side neighborhood, which was subjected to racial discrimination, with nonexistent childcare and substandard housing, where poverty, drug use, a lack of job training, and the effects of the Vietnam War were evident. Hughes created a high-quality childcare center that also offered job training, adult education classes, a Youth Action corps, housing assistance, and food resources.
When Susan Oki Mollway became a federal judge in the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii in 1998, she was surprised that she was the first Asian American woman to be appointed on the federal bench in the United States. She would remain an exclusive member of Asian American women who are federal judges until a decade later when Kiyo A. Matsumoto was appointed to the federal bench for the Eastern District of New York. Since then, membership of this small group began to grow in number and in diversity. The First Fifteen recounts the experiences of how the first fifteen Asian American women became federal judges, such as Jacqueline Nguyen who fled Vietnam as a child and Pamela Chen, an openly gay Asian woman, and how they succeeded. The women were interviewed by Mollway herself and the book was written by her as well which offers a unique perspective into these women's lives. Mollway discusses their upbringing, their backgrounds, and their attitudes which contributed to their successful navigation through the appointment process.
Today, women have greater opportunities to participate in sport than ever before, particularly due to the passage of Title IX in 1972. Yet, despite all this growth, women still struggle to hold leadership positions, become coaches of both girls and boys teams, receive equal pay, and get even adequate coverage in the media. [This book] explores the three crucial areas in sport that remain huge concerns for women: leadership, money, and media. Steidinger looks at the number of ways in which women experience vast inequalities by examining topics such as the politics of sport, sexual assault, the #MeToo movement, pay equity, women in coaching positions, and the experiences of women of colour and LGBTQ athletes. Interviews with leading authorities in the field and prominent female athletes are interwoven throughout to add both expert and personal perspectives to the conversation.
Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge (1866-1948) was an activist, social reformer, and educator who spent most of her life in Chicago whose life and work extended from the Civil War to the Cold War. Though a contemporary and partner to Jane Addams, this will be the first comprehensive biography of Sophie Breckinridge. While nationally and internationally renowned during her lifetime, Breckinridge has only received brief entries in the histories of women activism and social history. In this project, Anya Jabor examines Breckinridge's entire life and work, which includes involvement in nearly every type of reform of the Progressive and New Deal eras, from legal aid for immigrants, civil rights for blacks, labor legislation for workers, and juvenile courts for youth. With an M.A. in political science and a PhD in political economy, Breckinridge was a champion of women's education and helped to professionalize social work, thereby creating new career opportunities for educated women. She also advocated for safe working conditions, minimum wage, and full citizenship rights for women and established the School of Social Service Administration--a feminist "think tank" that addressed all of these issues and made women key players in policymaking.
Drawing on Black intellectual and grassroots organizing traditions, including the Haitian Revolution, the US civil rights movement, and LGBTQ rights and feminist movements, Unapologetic challenges all of us engaged in the social justice struggle to make the movement for Black liberation more radical, more queer, and more feminist. This book provides a vision for how social justice movements can become sharper and more effective through principled struggle, healing justice, and leadership development. It also offers a flexible model of what deeply effective organizing can be, anchored in the Chicago model of activism, which features long-term commitment, cultural sensitivity, creative strategizing, and multiple cross-group alliances. And Unapologetic provides a clear framework for activists committed to building transformative power, encouraging young people to see themselves as visionaries and leaders.
This thesis wants to fill the gap and give an insight into the development, the continuity and hence the importance of Black feminist thought within the early and ongoing Black freedom struggle. Due to the complexity and indefinite spectrum of knowledge already produced, this paper aims at outlining a perspective that bridges the late 19th/ early 20th century thoughts and efforts of Black feminists with those of the 20th/21st century. "There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives." Black women in the US have always played a crucial role in the struggle for freedom and recognition of human rights for the African-American population. Against all odds, they have always been the ones who looked out for and took care of the community. Be it in their own family, in the churches or while organizing resistance attempts against a consistent racism and sexism within US-society. The opening quote by Audre Lorde, a self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet", focuses on the fact that human beings do not have one singular feature which defines and impacts their way of life, interactions with or struggles against others. Heterogeneity is the keyword. Black women recognized and understood early on the importance of dealing with the intertwining of various aspects, which all define their lives. Just to name a few of those aspects: being Black and female and poor and of little standard education and - maybe - queer - Many factors define one single person's life, and therefore it is of no avail to put the focus on one single issue, when fighting for social justice.
The essays in this groundbreaking anthology, Keeping the Campfires Going, highlight the accomplishments of and challenges confronting Native women activists in American and Canadian cities. Since World War II, Indigenous women from many communities have stepped forward through organizations, in their families, or by themselves to take action on behalf of the growing number of Native people living in urban areas. This collection recounts and assesses the struggles, successes, and legacies of several of these women in cities across North America, from San Francisco to Toronto, Vancouver to Chica.
Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics brings together groundbreaking essays that speak to the relationship between Asian American feminisms, feminist of color work, and transnational feminist scholarship. This collection, featuring work by both senior and rising scholars, considers topics including the politics of visibility, histories of Asian American participation in women of color political formations, accountability for Asian American 'settler complicities' and cross-racial solidarities, and Asian American community-based strategies against state violence as shaped by and tied to women of color feminisms. Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics provides a deep conceptual intervention into the theoretical underpinnings of Asian American studies; ethnic studies; women's, gender, and sexual studies; as well as cultural studies in general.
In In Defense of Wyam, having secured access to hundreds of previously unknown and unexamined letters, Katrine Barber revisits the subject of Death of Celilo Falls, her first book. She presents a remarkable alliance across the opposed Native and settler-descended groups, chronicling how the lives of two women leaders converged in a shared struggle to protect the Indian homes of Celilo Village. Flora Thompson, member of the Warm Springs Tribe and wife of the Wyam chief, and Martha McKeown, daughter of an affluent white farming family, became lifelong allies as they worked together to protect Oregon’s oldest continuously inhabited site. As a Native woman, Flora wielded significant power within her community yet outside of it was dismissed for her race and her gender. Martha, although privileged due to her settler origins, turned to women’s clubs to expand her political authority beyond the conventional domestic sphere. Flora's and Martha’s coordinated efforts offer readers meaningful insight into a time and place where the rhetoric of Native sovereignty, the aims of environmental movements in the American West, and women’s political strategies intersected.
The beloved sequel to the now-classic Lakota Woman, Ohitika Woman follows Mary Brave Bird as she continues her powerful, dramatic tale of ancient glory and present anguish, of courage and despair, of magic and mystery, and, above all, of the survival of both body and mind.
Coming home from Wounded Knee in 1973, married to American Indian movement leader Leonard Crow Dog, Mary was a mother with the hope of a better life. But, as she says, "Trouble always finds me." With brutal frankness she bares her innermost thoughts, recounting the dark as well as the bright moments in her always eventful life. She not only talks about the stark truths of being a Native American living in a white-dominated society but also addresses the experience of being a mother, a woman, and, rarest of all, a Sioux feminist. Filled with contrasts, courage, and endurance, Ohitika Woman is a powerful testament to Mary’s will and spirit.