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

by 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 Chisolm’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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781797181240
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Audio
Publication date:	07/30/2024
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.50(h) x 5.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Clara Bingham is an award-winning journalist and the author of Witness to the Revolution, Women on the Hill, and the cowriter of Class Action. A former Washington, DC, correspondent for Newsweek, her writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, among others. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Keyonni James is a well-read, self-proclaimed bibliophile with a love for historical and literary fiction, and a fetish for women's health. She unwittingly sweeps listeners along a narrative journey with her smooth and inviting sound. Her vocal dexterity keeps the listener wondering if it's the same person behind the mic, as she imbues each character and genre with a vocal quality and personality specific to the author's intent. Her personality is as light and warm as her gorgeous smile.

Keyonni has formally trained and coached with leading industry narrators, and coaches and has trained at the Michigan Actors Studio. She is a fierce advocate and leader for diverse voices in audiobooks and is the creator of Voices of Color in Audiobooks (VOCA).

Keyonni has an undergraduate degree in women's studies and international development and therefore she has a very keen understanding and affinity for women's and feminist studies and issues. She holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Pittsburgh and is very comfortable narrating work with medical and scientific terminology; these two degrees intersect in her love of women's and maternal child health advocacy. Keyonni was a study abroad student in India, and was a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana, where she lived, working on issues around HIV/AIDS and development. She lives in Michigan and enjoys hanging out on any of the Great Lakes during the summer as well as RVing. When she's not working or narrating you will find her trying to get in some leisurely reading!

Natalie Naudus is one of the most beloved audiobook narrators working today and now author of her debut novel, Gay the Pray Away.

Gibson Frazier is an audiobook narrator and an actor who has performed with such distinguished off-Broadway theater companies as the Civilians, Les Freres Corbusier, the Vineyard, the Cherry Lane, New Georges, the Foundry, and Clubbed Thumb. He is a founding member of the Los Angeles–based theater company Buffalo Nights. He has been named as one of the Village Voice’s favorite actors.

Angel Pean is an actor and narrator who thrives on the power of storytelling and being a part of impactful projects that leave their mark. She made her way from Houston, Texas, to NYC to attend the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts. There, she obtained a degree in film and television performance.

Angel has had the pleasure of training with several coaches and actors, including Jay R. Goldenberg, Maury Ginsberg, and Ruth Nerken. Her love for storytelling, as well as reading, eventually led her to explore the beautiful world of audiobooks! She began studying with narrator and coach, Elise Arsenault, has since built a home studio, and recently finished narrating her very first book: The Vampire's Assistant by Eva Alton, a romantic fantasy now available on Audible.

In her free time, you'll certainly find her lounging around with her cat, or dancing. Angel currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia, where she is continuing to audition, work, and hone her craft.

Kamali Minter is a voice talent and audiobook narrator.

Kevin R. Free is an audiobook narrator and the winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and several AudioFile best narrations of the year selections. Known for his work with young-adult novels, he has read titles by Rick Riordan, Walter Dean Myers, and Joe Haldeman. In 2011 he was named a Best Voice in Young Adult and Fantasy from AudioFile magazine for his narration of Myers’ The Cruisers: Checkmate.

Aida Reluzco is a first-generation queer/LGBTQ+ American of Cuban and Filipino descent as well as a patron and contributor to the creative arts. Having received training in character studies, dialects, animation, and theater, she can usually be found enjoying life with her young family or reading.

Billie Fulford-Brown is a London-based actress, voice-over artist, and AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator.

Original bio sent from Cassandra:

Cassandra Campbell began doing voice overs as the voice for Calvin Klein’s Italian commercials. This was followed by commercial and documentary recording in both English and Italian. She has recorded many audiobooks and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as an Audie® Award nomination. As an actress and director, she has worked at the Public, the Mint, the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Stagewest, Theatreworks, the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, Millmountain Theatre, the National Shakespeare Company, and the New York Fringe Festival.

When he was seven, David Sadzin’s first grade teacher gave him a paragraph to read out loud. She interrupted him halfway to proclaim him the “Ringmaster” in his class’s musical extravaganza about the circus. He’s been using his voice to get out of trouble ever since. After a few intense years on New York’s stages, performing traditional and experimental theater, improv, and sketch comedy, he’s now settled comfortably in front of the mic in his home studio in Brooklyn.

Eunice Wong is a classically trained actor who works extensively in professional theaters across the United States and in New York City, as well as having appeared on HBO, NBC, ABC, Comedy Central, and in various independent films. Eunice is a graduate of the Juilliard School Drama Division Actor Training Program and has also studied piano and singing at the Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto. A first-generation Chinese Canadian, born in Toronto to Eric and Eleanor Wong, who immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong, Eunice grew up with her brother Eugene in Toronto and thanks her family for their constant love and support.

Janina Edwards, an Earphone Award–winning narrator, is a graduate of the acting program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Editorial Reviews

"A fascinating oral history of the women’s movement from 1963 to 1973, a decade when so much progress was made and so much more seemed just beyond the horizon."
—Parade, "Best New Book Releases This Month"

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

"Bingham celebrates the women who brought about change. Ranging across politics, health, employment, sports, and the arts, and including BIPOC and LGBTQ+ voices, this compilation effectively recreates a momentous decade."
—Booklist

"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

From the Publisher

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.

Kirkus Reviews