Book Reviews

Ferida Wolff writes: "As our communities become more urbanized, the natural features around us tend to get pushed into the background and often go unnoticed. In Ferida’s Backyard, I look at the details of nature locally, from a neighborhood perspective, frequently from a backyard vantage point. It excites me to share what I see. An awareness of the natural connection can beautifully enhance our lives...I was invigorated by the tree hug and went along with a bounce in my step. It helped me to be more aware of what I was seeing now, even if I had seen it all before." more »

Jo Freeman reviews: Every feminist should read this book. Spread out over four countries in western Asia, the Kurds, at different times, have tried to become a separate state, or to just be allowed to govern their own people, speak their own language and practice their own culture within existing states. Written as narrative non-fiction, this book reads like a novel, but is based on factual reportage. The author is an American descendant of a Kurdish immigrant who has written about this region for years. Her main subjects are four women in the YPJ – a Kurdish acronym for Women’s Protection Units. They are organized separately from the male YPG, though they carry the same weapons, get the same training and do the same jobs. Every feminist should read this book. So should those in the military, particularly those who think, or used to think, that women don’t belong on the front lines of war. more »

From the Editor: Last night I watched — on television — the San Francisco Giants play their rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, winners of the 2020 National League Championship title. They played in Arizona, where the Giants hold their spring training and the game ended in a tie. But it was another location I thought about in Brooklyn, and a game that featured guest Hank Greenburg, a well-known player that my father admired. At that time, Greenberg was retired, I believe, but the fans at the Dexter Park, crowded the stands to see him. Last year, I wrote a brief article, A Baseball Story You Might Not Have Heard About an American Catcher and Spy for the OSS, and thought this year I might follow it up with an lengthy excerpt from a story about the Brooklyn Bushwicks. "Even as minor league and semipro baseball declined in the 1940s, the Bushwicks still outdrew the big league Philadelphia Phillies and Boston Braves in 1945." more »

Jo Freeman writes: "Ida B. Wells was an important writer and activist. She was born in 1862 in Mississippi and died in 1931 in Chicago. She lost her parents in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic. Wanting to keep her siblings together, Ida got a job as a teacher at age 16 to earn the money to support them. She later took some of them to Memphis where she shifted from being a teacher to a writer. She is primarily known for her tracts against lynching, which led to her being run out of town in 1892... There are some gaps. Very little is said about her frequent work for woman suffrage beyond a few swipes at white suffragists and sixties feminists. There is nothing about her extensive work for the Republican Party, such as being the official Hoover campaign Organizer of Negro Women for Illinois in 1928. more »