Issue 1.1 Archives - LIBER Review

1.1 On the Cover

Charis Caputo

On the cover: “Audre” Elise Peterson’s digital collages are casually electrifying. “Audre,” on the cover, evokes Lorde’s distinct feminism by juxtaposing cozy intimacy and radical commitments. The last page of LIBER features Grace Jones circa 1985 perfectly balanced within Matisse’s La Danse (1909), effortlessly central. A writer, children’s book illustrator, and parent of a three-year-old, Peterson hosts the COOL MOMS podcast (recording live at SoHo House). In it, she interviews mothers who, like her, “prioritize their passions.” A longtime

Poetry Comment

Katha Pollitt

How thrilling to include poems by Joy Ladin in the very first issue of LIBER. She’s a wonderful and prolific poet, with nine books and counting. Her most recent, The Book of Anna, won this year’s National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. She is also the first trans woman to be tenured at an Orthodox Jewish university, Yeshiva, in New York City. Many of Ladin’s poems are long and deal in a deeply philosophical-religious way

Editor’s Letter

Jennifer Baumgardner

A quick (yet somehow exhaustive) memory inventory of where I glimpsed feminism while growing up in Fargo in the 1970s and 1980s: My purple, clothbound Free to Be . . . You and Me book and accompanying record My Judy Blume books, especially Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Forever Mom’s subscription to Ms. The first Simon & Schuster edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves, where I read about masturbation, lesbians, and abortion Mom’s

Greatest Hits in Feminist Publishing

Jennifer Baumgardner

with assistance from CATHARINE STIMPSON, SHANE SNOWDON, BARBARA SMITH, and ANDI ZEISLER 1790–1792 In 1790, Mary Wollstonecraft anonymously pens A Vindication of the Rights of Men. It’s all rave reviews and hot sales until her name is added to the second edition and, overnight, the text is derided as overly emotional. The following year, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is published under her name, and a feminist philosopher is born. 1843 Margaret

Sarah Kane: Her Plays are Violent and Disgusting (and Got Me Through the Pandemic)

Noelle McManus

North Yorkshire, UK; Methuen Drama, 2008, 288 pp., $25.95, paperback A short synopsis of English playwright Sarah Kane’s 1995 play Blasted: Tabloid journalist Ian and his much-younger girlfriend, Cate, check into a hotel room. Ian makes several racist and homophobic comments and berates Cate’s intelligence. They discuss what seems to be a war going on around them. He coerces her into uncomfortable, violent sexual acts. She escapes through the bathroom window. A soldier bursts into

What We Remember is Not the Past

Laurie Stone

Laurie Stone at the Morton Street Pier in New York City, c. 1970. Photo courtesy of author. Yesterday, I received a check for the security deposit on my apartment in New York City. It’s done. I lived there for forty-three years. I have visions of the open road, except we can’t go anywhere. In unpacking from the move, I found notebooks I wrote in the 1970s. The particulars of my life are news to me—who

Historical Failure: ‘Dickinson’ and ‘The Great’

Meg Whiteford

There exists a certain genre I’ve grown to love. I will describe it as “writer struggling with a historical failure.” I don’t mean that the failure itself is historic, but rather that the artist is failing to write about or depict a historical figure, most often another writer or artist. The genre includes books like Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage (the narrator struggling with a biography of D. H. Lawrence), the recent gem Doireann

Just Go

Charis Caputo

A still from Thelma & Louise (1991), the first road trip movie with women at the wheel. In the summer of 2021, in those halcyon months between vaccination and the Delta wave, I drove from New York to Los Angeles with my friend Julie. I had barely driven since high school, had never driven west, had taken only short road trips with boyfriends who never let me drive. Like everyone else in the world, Julie

Redneck Lives Matter

Chris Kraus

The writer and critic Chris Kraus (I Love Dick, Social Practices, After Kathy Acker, et al.) lived part-time on northern Minnesota’s Iron Range for seven years (2013– 2020), researching The Four Spent the Day Together, a novel inspired by a series of violent methamphetamine crimes involving teenagers. The narrative is intercut with police reports, court documents, text messages, interviews, and monologues. This piece is one of several studies culled from social media accounts and conversa-

Characters: They’re Just Like Us!

Rebecca Saltzman

Mrs. Dalloway realizes she left her wallet at home. Dorian Gray keeps his skin youthful by using a daily SPF, and also by having a cursed painting in the closet. Clytemnestra obsesses over true crime podcasts. Lady Macbeth gets period stains out of her favorite outfit. Finding himself transformed into a giant insect, Gregor Samsa is relieved to have an excuse to cancel plans.

Issue 1.1