Blog Around

Here's a collection of long reads for your weekend pleasure.

The always brilliant S.E. Smith writes about the benefit of hunting down the histories of women: Taking Back Women's Histories

The 20th century was a turbulent, difficult, and amazing one in women’s history. Even as it marked the emergence of women as a social power and force to be reckoned with, who would not be ignored or pushed into the corner, it also marked an era of repression and the continual emergence of new and sneaky methods to keep women in a position of lesser status. The strides of the women’s rights movement were critical, but by no means brought about total equality, which is why it’s so important to continue the fight today — and why the decision to fight to confront, preserve, and retain women’s history is so critical.

Claudia Roth Pierpont gives a thorough looking into how Nina Simone turned the movement into music in this The New Yorker article A Raised Voice

Simone had been singing out loud and clear about civil rights since 1963—well after the heroic stand of figures like Harry Belafonte and Sammy Davis, Jr., but still at a time when many black performers felt trapped between the rules of commercial success and the increasing pressure for racial confrontation. At Motown, in the early sixties, the wildly popular performers of a stream of crossover hits became models of black achievement but had virtually no contact with the movement at all.

Quora contributor and game designer Feifei Wang answers What's it Like to be a Woman Working in the Video Game Industry?

I think things are getting better. More and more game companies make a point to hire more women and other minority groups to make sure the working environment is more friendly and inclusive. So for you girls out there, come work for the gaming industry. The bottom line is, sexism is everywhere, if you’re gonna get it no matter what, you might as well choose a career that give you most for your trouble.

Katherine Cross takes a close look at ageism in The Kids Were Always Alright: Breaking the Spell of Ageless Ageism

The problems caused by thinking that young people are uniquely destructive are legion for activists: it fractures the energies of our movement and denies useful tools to those who may need them most.

Earlier this week The Sun reposted its fantastic 2006 interview with the late Nadine Gordimer.

Passion springs up from her soft voice as she talks about the Aficaness of her works, “You’re influences by where you live and the views of your friends and society.” As she was growing up in the racist apartheid South Africa, she felt an urge to fight against apartheid. “By the time I was twelve years old, I could see there was something very wrong with the way the country was and the way we were living,” she says. Her mother also felt the same way. “That’s how I became anti-apartheid before apartheid ended.”

Want to brush up on your knowledge of Women's Studies? Check out Autostraddle's Rebel Girls: The Illustrated (And Quite Condensed) History of Women’s Studies

According to Marilyn Boxer, the history of Women’s Studies lies deep within the history of women in academia. She envisions the institutionalization of the program — one which expands every year — as a natural next step for the movement to include women in academic work.