Issue 1.3 Archives - LIBER Review

1.3 On the Cover

Charis Caputo

On the cover: “Matisse’s Model (The French Collection, Part1: #5), 1991 by Faith Ringgold Matisse’s Model (The French Collection, Part 1: #5), 1991 By Faith Ringgold Acrylic on canvas, printed and tie-dyed pieced fabric, and ink Courtesy of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Frederick R. Weisman Contemporary Art Acquisitions Endowment. To take in the protean career of Faith Ringgold⎯as I did recently at the New Museum’s landmark retrospective Faith Ringgold: American People, which ripples across

Poetry Comment

Katha Pollitt

We’re often told that the United States is a nation of immigrants. Historically, newcomers have been expected to be grateful and to blend into the dominant culture, and that’s what a lot of them have done. My grandparents left what is now Belarus in 1920 and made a great life for themselves in Brooklyn. Not for them Elizabeth Bishop’s question, “Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?” If they had stayed home,

Editor’s Letter

Jennifer Baumgardner

Some people find the analogy of mothers and daughters to describe intrafeminist generational tension annoying and inaccurate, but not me. Chapter six of Manifesta, my book with Amy Richards (2000), is titled “Thou Shalt Not Become Thy Mother” and ends with an open letter to “older feminists,” the theme of which is “you’re not the boss of me!” Mothers are everything to children at the beginning of life, and maturing is the child learning to

What Kind of Person Has an Abortion

Jennifer Baumgardner

Florence Rice Florence Rice had an abortion in the 1930s. I was sixteen when I had my daughter. They put her in my arms and she looked at me like, If you don’t want me, then I don’t want you either! You know, she just had that look, and I fell in love with her then. I began to dream about giving her the opportunities that I never had. Later on, I sort of went

Obfuscation and the Growing Use of Gender-Neutral Pronouns

Noelle McManus

Kyle Channing Smith ON OCTOBER 5, 2021, writer Joyce Carol Oates tweeted: “they” will not become a part of general usage, not for political reasons but because there would be no pronoun to distinguish between a singular subject (“they”) & a plural subject (“they”). language seeks to communicate w/ clarity, not to obfuscate; that is its purpose. After receiving criticism, she issued several rather thoughtful apologies and acknowledged the impact her words could have

Food

Laurie Stone

Julia Child on the set of The French Chef, c. 1965. Photo by Paul Child I WANT TO tell you about the drive to NYC early Sunday morning, the car packed with items for a party I’d agreed to cater. The man I live with was driving, and in my passenger seat I fell into a sleep that was deep and uncomfortable and thrilling as a cloud that swallows you. Pure sensation is a thing

A Conversation with My Mother

Anna Godbersen

That year, I asked only one question and spent a lot of time looking out my apartment’s kitchen window. The view was mostly a three-story ailanthus, its leaves orange and lavender at the end of the day. The phone rang. It was my mother. That year, I didn’t like talking to my mother, and I asked questions to avoid having to talk about myself. But really, I was only asking one question: Will I have

There is No Childcare at This Conference

Sarah Dougher

The Raincoats’s debut self-titled album (Rough Trade, 1979). We have felt sometimes a lack of understanding from some people about what we’re doing. . . . The label tagged on us was feminism—what else? And although we feel that sexual roles are not questioned enough and therefore sickly defined, they are not our only concern and the isolation in whichevery human being seems to be confined hits me very deeply each time I . . . RESTRICTED CONTENT

Surrender to the Body: An Interview With Dana Goetsch

McKenzie Wark

Diana Goetsch. Photo by Svetlana Jovanovic Diana Goetsch is the author of eight collections of poetry and the “Life in Transition” blog at The American Scholar. McKenzie Wark talked to Goetsch about gender transition, writing through the body, New York nightlife, and her new memoir, This Body I Wore (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, May 2022). McKenzie: You were an established writer as a poet before you transitioned. How did that change your writing? Diana: In

Little Faggot

Michelle Tea

Kyle Channing Smith. At the ticket counter of the bus station in Austin, I cleared my throat and conjured the dignity of a thousand proud women in distress. Black and white women with wide-brimmed hats and slim skirts. I arranged my face in an earnest yet proud expression. My eyes would connect deeply, hopefully, with the ticket seller, a woman who was ignoring me. She was a little jowly, her hair either wet from her

Issue 1.3