Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild

This book is simply delicious - Sisterhood, Interrupted truly is brain candy for the thinking woman. With an insightful and balanced touch, Deborah Siegel explains how we've arrived at this place where the "f-word" (that is, FEMINISM) has become a loaded phrase of epic proportions. Siegel's compelling arguments for a truce amongst generations made my stomach fill with happy butterflies of hope. If you support a world which encourages women to be strong & self-fulfilled, you won't want to miss this gem of a book.

As a 100% feminist, I was really excited to read Sisterhood Interrupted. For anyone who has wondered what happened to the feminist movement, this book is a great history that tracks how change was ignited by an intrepid "girl" reporter in the 1960s who went undercover as a waitress at the infamous Playboy Club in New York City through to today's generation of women who aren't sure whether to embrace the '"f" word or not, or what it really means. Divided into two sections, "Mothers" and "Daughters," Siegel traces, among other things, the efforts of Betty Friedan to make feminism a cause that wives and mothers in the heartland could relate to and examines Friedan's own frustrations at the time she was president of NOW about why more women weren't embracing efforts to open doors for increased opportunities. As one of the many beneficiaries of all the groundwork my "sisters" did to enable my own opportunities, I was fascinated to read about their questions about how best to pursue their quest for equal rights. Ask my parents, and they'll tell you that there was never any question that I would be a full-fledged feminist with a capital "F" -- a girl from a small rural town who wanted to major in political science, vote as soon as I turned 18, and who was determined to take on whatever challenges came my way. I thank all the Glorias and Bettys who went before me for making that possible. And I'm happy to say the little apple didn't fall far from the tree. The other day my daughter asked me to explain why there was a picture of a globe on my T-shirt with the caption, "Women. We'll Settle for Half." "Why don't we already have half?" she asked, with a look on her face that signaled she could not even comprehend a world where she girls weren't equal to boys. I hope for my daughter's sake the Sisterhood continues to grow and thrive. But it's clear from the history that Siegel has traced in her book, there's still some serious work to be done. As Siegel sums it up, we need to put an end to feminist infighting -- about who's doing things the right way or the wrong way -- and call a truce if we're to continue making any progress at all: "Younger women need older feminists to understand that for a women's movement to continue to move forward, it will require updating and reinvention. At the same time, younger women need to stop blaming older ones and ditch old stereotypes about the second wave that preclude them from rallying around common themes." And to that I say, Amen.

As if we needed more proof of the very existence of feminism - and how it has been interpreted through the mainstream culture - Deborah Seigel has handed us a history lesson wrapped in a hot pink love letter. In her nonfiction book, Sisterhood Interrupted, Seigel imparts that not only has feminism had its mis-steps, it's fallen clear away from its foundation. But maybe that foundation needs a shake. Don't misunderstand me: Seigel's words aren't an attack on the "f-word." Rather, she's building that tenuous bridge between the young and seemingly unmotivated, feminists and their burnt-out mothers. As a 26-year-old, self-identified woman in America, I can look around and see where the American feminist movement has failed my generation more than I can see it's successes, at times. And that's where Seigel makes her best historical point. I, with all my privilege, have the power of choice based on the historical outcomes of the movement. And I have feminists - past and present - to thank for that choice. Sisterhood Interrupted is a quick and exciting read; Seigel exposes knowledge on where (and why) the movement split, between the more highly profiled Betty Freidan and Gloria Steinem, as well as the justification for retiring some words, like, "sisterhood." "But now I realize that sisterhood is phony. Even when there's consensus, there isn't," says Amy Richards, co-author of ManifestA, in a conversation with Seigel. "I think younger women have a better sense that it is a big façade." This 'façade' is not a backlash, or an attempt to dis-empower feminism, it's just a reality of the movement. We're not sisters based on gender alone or simply based on feminist history. I believe opening the discussion to a few things that have been deemed `sacred' isn't such a terrible thing at all.

First wave, second wave, third wave, feminist, postfeminist, Ms., Bust, the personal is political, fish, men, and bicycles...In this thoroughly absorbing and lively account of feminism's current incarnation, non-academics like me will get an entertaining primer on the history of feminism as well as insight into its current challenges and successes. Siegel reminds us, without ever being sententious or in any way preachy, how relevant feminism is to all of us every single day.

With a readable, engaging style, Siegel takes feminist history, the good, the bad, and the vicious, and tells us what happened and why we should care. Her very careful, nuanced, play-by-play account of the early years and struggles of the second wave feminist movement, as well as documentation of the third wave's origins and modern incarnations, is vital in an era when women are constantly pitted against each other, whether it's young vs. old, stay at home moms vs. working moms, feminists vs. non-feminists, etc. Siegel doesn't shy away from the truly bitter divides that cropped up in the second wave (and, one could probably argue, were passed down from the first wave and its predecessors, though Siegel limits herself to the 1950's and beyond), and in doing so brings needed attention to the causes women were and are fighting for. Her point is not that younger feminists should simply be more educated, or older feminists more tolerating, but that infighting is as old as feminism and is, perhaps, good for it in that it helps the movement grow, stretch, change, and evolve. Siegel also tackles why feminism is still important, even if "feminism" is becoming increasingly hard to define, for feminists and non-feminists. It's this very erasure and confusion over the word, its history, and its motives that Siegel unpacks so well. She doesn't necessarily want readers to identify with either the "mothers" or "daughters" here, but to gain a clearer picture of who is in each group and what their main gripes with each other are (as well as areas where they've bonded and interacted). The idea that "conflict has long been feminism's lifeblood," along with the need for the more radical and more mainstream strands of a social movement, are ideas that Siegel presents with scholarly yet accessible detail that revisits some of the high (and low) points of second wave feminism, and also explores the various strands of anti-feminism that have sprung up since then. Some of her examples seem reaching; when she writes, "At the dawn of the new millennium, it was no longer simply a battle between feminists but between older and younger women more broadly," going on to cite The Devil Wears Prada, Chore Whore, and The Second Assistant, I'm not really sure how or where this fits in since these aren't books about feminism and if the idea is that women shouldn't criticize their female bosses or portray them as equally as heinous as male bosses, that seems like a reverse kind of chauvinism. (The example of Citizen Girl hits much closer to home.) To my reading, this is part of a larger conflation of pop culture and "feminism," whereby anything that happened on, say, Sex and the City, is The Truth For Women. While I think art and fiction and television do reflect reality, they are not exact replicas and should not be taken as such. This leads me to my larger question, which is whether a book like this is speaking to or only trying to reach self-described feminists or a larger audi