Shelving: Rereading Women by Sandra M. Gilbert

I really wanted to like this books. Feminist criticism, whether in music, literature, or even mainstream pop culture, remains marginalized, but Gilbert's book just left me with more questions than answers, primarily, what place does academia have in feminism? (Not the other way around.)

Though most of the essays in Rereading Women date from the 80s to the late 90s, in the introduction she writes on becoming a feminist in the 50s and 60s, and touches on the rift between second and third wave feminists:

"Students and interviewers often ask such questions, eagerly wondering, 'How did you...?' 'Why did you...?' and 'When did you...?' Many of them, participants in the Riot Grrrl Revolution that's part of what's now known as Third Wave feminism, have some stereotypical ideas about those of us who rose to consciousness as the Second Wave crested and flung new ideas all over the world."

I wish I didn't have to, because I've more than once written about riot grrrls insularity, but isn't pretty stereotypical, too, of older feminists to lump younger ones into easily defined categories? If every woman born after 1970 who identifies as a feminist is, by default, a "riot grrrl" feminism,  then I want a different word to describe what I am. This is a huge pet peeve of mine.

She also disagrees with Jessica Valenti, who in her book, Full Frontal Feminism says, "When I started coming home from grad school with ideas and theories that I couldn't talk to [my mother] about, academic feminism ceased to be truly useful to me. I think feminism should be accessible to everybody. no matter what your education level. And while high theory is pretty fucking cool, it's not something everybody is going to related to."

Exactly, which is the biggest problem I had with this book. Working-class and women of color were given nary a footnote. Trans and gay women are nowhere to be seen. While its a pretty powerful thing to have a feminist literary canon, it's becomes nullified by its exclusion -- in essence, it's no better than the patriarchal one before it.