Click: Becoming Feminists

Alciun Design Award, Honourable Mention Click: Gloria Steinhem’s familiar expression for the moment of feminist self-awareness, the radicalization of consciousness, resonates loudly today as it did for the movement’s founders. Feminism was born of women’s experience and for many that experience was an instant of recognition, a flood of light, a new and sudden sensibility. What all feminists share is revelation. In search of those definitive click moments, poet and anthologist Crosbie asked thirty women – writers, journalists, musicians, actors, academics and artists - who have inscribed feminism in their lives and work to recount the experiences that made the personal political for them. The result is an electrifying anthology that takes flight from a common phenomenon but overflows with feminism’s diversity, contrariness, and truth-telling strength. For example: British Columbia poet Lorna Crozier writes of making sense of her mother’s seemingly contradictory life; Toronto journalist, broadcaster and activist June Callwood shares the episodes that made her a social activist; American essayist and author Sallie Tisdale finds meaning in laundry; For Yugoslav journalist Slavenka Drakulic, liberation was the freedom to wear lipstick and heels; For Egyptian scholar Nawal El-Saadawi, it was questioning the favouritism shown to her brother. Toronto writer and editor Naomi Klein reflects on the Montreal massacre; Mamie Van Doren, on her role as Hollywood sex symbol; and Dr. Debra Orenstein fought to take her place as a seventh-generation rabbi in Los Angeles; New York shock-rocker Kembra Pfahler, for the right to be as outrageous as she dared. This rich collection brings together thirty women of varying ages, races, religions, classes and attitudes; all contribute here to the feminist discourse in voices that are funny, sensual, radical, angry, honest and unforgettable. Clickis Lynn Crosbie’s second anthology. The first was the best-selling and notorious collection of feminist eroticaThe Girl Wants To.