Talking Back and Acting Out is a collection of writing by women who actively negotiate, reconstruct, and re-imagine their identities in opposition to dominant cultural constructions. Stories in the mass media often reduce women to stereotypes grounded in ideas about social class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, and nationality. These media images are not only limiting, but the stories are often couched in victimization and powerlessness. This collection explores individual women's refusal to be reduced to hegemonic constructions, prescribed identities, and limited possibilities. These essays highlight stories of women who push the boundaries of what it means to be a woman in this multicultural, yet white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist society. Talking Back and Acting Out offers stories of women's resistance against the odds women who have not only survived but thrived, and who have not only made a difference in their own lives but in the lives of others.

Autorentext

The Editors: Sandra Jackson is Associate Professor in the School of Education at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. Her teaching and research interests include teacher education and faculty development, autobiography and narrative, feminist frameworks, curriculum studies, secondary education, higher education, and multiculturalism. She is co-author of Beyond Comfort Zones in Multiculturalism: Challenging the Politics of Privilege as Educators (1995) and co-editor of I've Got a Story to Tell: Identity and Place in the Academy (Peter Lang, 1999).
Ann Russo is Associate Professor of Women's Studies at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. Her research, teaching, and activism focus on the harassment, abuse, and violence in women's lives. She is co-editor of Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (1990) and co-author of Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (1998).

Zusammenfassung
"Through the lens of popular culture, 'Talking Back and Acting Out' interrogates the gendered stories presented over one's lifetime and the complexities presented for negotiating our own ethnic, racial, sexual, class, and gender identity. Sandra Jackson and Ann Russo bring together sixteen engaging and compelling personal essays that demonstrate the power of the narrative, reminding us how storytelling can be oppressive or a tool of resistance and social change." (Mary Romero, Author of 'Maid in the USA'; Co-Editor of 'Women's Untold Stories')
"'Talking Back and Acting Out' takes seriously the call to transform cultural representations of women (and by extension feminism itself) across lines of difference. Through examinations of cultural iconography reproduced throughout generations and transmitted through various cultural forms, the authors tell their stories of agency and resistance. Their intent (fully realized in 'Talking Back and Acting Out') is disruption of the prevailing repressive social order, leading to transformation of self and society. Women are thus perceived less as victims and more as active agents fighting back against oppression. This is an important book that will be significant for scholars, students, and activists." (Jacqueline Bobo, Professor and Chair, Women's Studies Program, University of California, Santa Barbara)

Inhalt
Contents: Sandra Jackson/Ann Russo: Introduction Sandra Jackson: Encounters with Simulacra: The Media, Representations of Blackness, and Me Elena Tajima Creef: Childhood Reflections from a Shattered Mirror: Looking for Images of Strong Asian Women Marilyn Katz: Snapshots Harvette Grey: Images of Beauty: The Media, Marilyn, and Me Juana Q. Goergen: A Través del Espejo (Through the Looking Glass) Elizabeth A. Kelly: You Could Throw Them Away without Breaking Your Heart: My Life in Magazines Layla P. Suleiman Gonzalez: Mirada de Mujer: Negotiating Latina Identities and the Telenovela Kate Kane: What Puts the «Me» in Media? An Umphaloskeptic Interrogation of Television and Identity Shailja Sharma: Kamasutra Lynn Lu: A Tangled Web Elizabeth Jean Nelson: Before and After: A Story of Resistance Erica Meiners: Contradictions at the Cook County Jail: Snapshots on the Complexities of Volunteering for Social Change Lourdes Torres: Becoming Visible: U.S. Latina Lesbians Talk Back and Act Out Francesca T. Royster: Everyday Use, or How I Stole Othello and What I Did with Him Laila Farah: Living in the Hyphen-Nation Ann Russo: Stories of Survival, Stories of Resistance.