The Movement: How Women's Liberation Transformed America 1963-1973

by Clara Bingham Narrated by Cassandra Campbell, Janina Edwards, Gibson Frazier, Kevin R. Free, Billie Fulford-Brown, Keyonni James, Sunny Lu, Kamali Minter, Natalie Naudus, Angel Pean, Aida Reluzco, David Sadzin, Eunice Wong, Clara Bingham

Overview

A comprehensive and engaging oral history of the decade that defined the feminist movement, including interviews with living icons and unsung heroes-from former Newsweek reporter and author of the “powerful and moving” (New York Times) Witness to the Revolution.

For lovers of both Barbie and Gloria Steinem, The Movement is the first oral history of the decade that built the modern feminist movement. Through the captivating individual voices of the people who lived it, The Movement tells the intimate inside story of what it felt like to be at the forefront of the modern feminist crusade, when women rejected thousands of years of custom and demanded the freedom to be who they wanted and needed to be.

This engaging history traces women's awakening, organizing, and agitating between the years of 1963 and 1973, when a decentralized collection of people and events coalesced to create a spontaneous combustion. From Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, to the underground abortion network the Janes, to Shirley Chisholm's presidential campaign and Billie Jean King's 1973 battle of the sexes, Bingham artfully weaves together the fragments of that explosion person by person, bringing to life the emotions of this personal, cultural, and political revolution. Artists and politicians, athletes and lawyers, Black and white, The Movement brings readers into the rooms where these women insisted on being treated as first class citizens, and in the process, changed the fabric of American life.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

A vivid contribution to women’s history.”
—Kirkus

"Clara Bingham has given the world an indispensable new book that belongs on the shelf of every American woman—part history, part encyclopedia of a time, and an absolute page-turning drama, all in one."
—Sally Jenkins, Washington Post sports columnist and author of The Right Call: What Sports Teach Us About Work and Life and The Real All Americans

"Read this book! Bingham gives us the gift of private conversations with the extraordinary women who forged our own path to power."
—Katty Kay, New York Times bestselling author of The Confidence Code

“In this meticulously researched, beautifully assembled oral history, Clara Bingham offers us the first truly comprehensive account of the women’s movement, underscoring its inextricable links to the Civil Rights cause and the vital role played by activists of color. In so doing, The Movement restores voices often lost to history, and gives center stage to the unsung “sheroes” and “heroes” of the fight for gender equality. White and Black, Latin-X and Asian, straight and queer are all included in this spellbinding portrait of a revolutionary time and a quintessentially American struggle. The Movement is a vital book and necessary corrective in our own era of national fracture, historic amnesia and outright erasure.”
—Susan Fales-Hill, Executive Producer, And Just Like That and author of Always Wear Joy

“Clara Bingham’s The Movement gives us such fascinating personal revelations, the unvarnished views of how the women’s movement got started in the actual voices of the women (and men) who began it all. There is so much insight and explanation here, from the historic Presidential campaign of black Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, to how Title IX got slipped into an education bill to the feuds among the 'purists' versus the pragmatists that sheds light on why women today still have a long way to go to achieve real equality.”
—Maureen Orth, Special Correspondent, Vanity Fair

“With her journalist’s ear and historian’s eye, Clara Bingham has collected the voices of diverse change agents, who narrate the story of seismic change in America, in the early years of the modern women’s movement. Her book is an engaging read and an important primary source.”
—Elisabeth Griffith, PhD, author of Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality, 1920-2020 and Substack’s “Pink Threads”

“‘How do you describe a period in history when the consciousness of millions of people fundamentally changed?’ Clara Bingham asks in The Movement: How Women’s Liberation Transformed America 1963-1973. As a reporter who covered that movement, I expected Bingham’s sweeping oral history to be as illuminating and inspiring as it certainly is—but I did not expect it to plunge me into paroxysms of grief and rage or leave me with such a powerful mixture of heartbreak and renewed resolve. Through the voices of political, social, legal, and cultural leaders from a wide range of backgrounds, Bingham delivers an indispensable record of the visionaries who fought so hard to win basic human rights, as well as a chilling reminder of how fierce the resistance was—and still is. With many of those rights once again imperiled, The Movement provides an electrifying blueprint for how determined women can, and do, change the entire world.”
—Leslie Bennetts, author of Last Girl Before Freeway

“Nobody burned a bra and it wasn't just White feminism. Having lived and covered the modern Women's Movement, I welcome Clara Bingham’s compelling book, an enlightening record for new generations. And a chilling reminder of rights still under attack today. This is invaluable living history.”
—Lynn Sherr, journalist, author, feminist historian

"The old adage about being condemned to repeat the history that we don't know could not ring more true than it does right now. The Movement feels like just the recalling and reclaiming needed in this precarious moment for women's rights. It reminds us that we have had our backs up against higher and harder walls before and the collective strength, will and tenacity of women pulled us over those obstacles and through those times. I'm excited for this generation to have a roadmap with real stories of trials and triumph for guidance."
—Tarana Burke, Activist, Author, and Founder of the ‘me too.’ Movement

“Who better to bear witness to this period of feminism than the remarkable activists who lived it? I will return to this book again and again. It feeds my soul. Clara Bingham has given us a gift for a lifetime.”
—Dolen Perkins-Valdez, novelist and author of Take My Hand

"The Movement is essential reading for anyone who aims to learn firsthand from a diverse group of leaders, believers, trailblazers of the feminist movement, but more importantly shows the lessons we must retain to keep fighting for gender equality, now more than ever."
—Mini Timmaraju, President and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All

Kirkus Reviews

2024-04-20
Historical study of “when women…found the freedom to be who they needed and wanted to be.”

Journalist Bingham, author of Witness to the Revolution, draws on abundant interviews and oral history archives to create a brisk, firsthand account of the women’s movement, beginning with the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, encompassing the founding of the National Organization of Women and Ms. magazine, and ending with the Supreme Court’s legalization of abortion in 1973. Among those bearing witness to the crucial decade are Pauli Murray, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Shirley Chisholm, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Margo Jefferson, Vivian Gornick, Billie Jean King, and Gloria Steinem. All relate their frustration in confronting the legal, political, medical, and economic limitations on women’s lives. As Bobbi Gibb, the first woman to run in the Boston Marathon, put it, women repeatedly got one message: “You’re in this box. Here’s the box. Here are the bars. I’m sorry, that’s as far as you can go.” Several women bring up the confluence of the women’s movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and the anti-war movement. Others testify to the “anxiety-ridden secret lives” of women who had abortions—including Gornick, who found a medical resident who performed the abortion, gave her antibiotics, and checked in with her every day for the next week. “It was as good as it could be,” she recalls, “but it was illegal and it was frightening.” Nora Ephron, among others, recounts discrimination in employment. When she applied for a job at Newsweek, she was hired as a mail girl, while men with the same qualifications were hired as reporters. “It was a given in those days,” she said, “that if you were a woman and you wanted to do certain things, you were going to have to be the exception to the rule.”

A vivid contribution to women’s history.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940191691718
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	07/30/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged