Serving the Community College of Vermont & Vermont State University
Serving the Community College of Vermont & Vermont State University
“I'm no longer accepting the things I cannot change...I'm changing the things I cannot accept.”
– Angela Davis
March is Women's History Month. The theme for 2024 is Women Who Advocate for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, recognizing women throughout the country who understand that, for a positive future, we need to eliminate bias and discrimination entirely from our lives and institutions.
See below for select VSCS Libraries materials that highlight this struggle. You may also visit our full list of resources about and by women engaged in working for inclusion, equality and fairness.
A sampling of recent books highlighting women involved in the struggle to eliminate bias and discrimination in our institutions and society. All electronic titles are available to read online and our physical titles may be requested for pick-up at a VSCS library or sent to your home.
The essayist Adela Sloss-Vento (1901–1998) was a powerhouse of activism in South Texas's Lower Rio Grande Valley throughout the Mexican American civil rights movement beginning in 1920 and the subsequent Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s. At last presenting the full story of Sloss-Vento's achievements, Agent of Change revives a forgotten history of a major female Latina leader.
Presenting radical new ways to think about love, the author examines the role of love in our personal and professional lives and how it can be used to end struggles between individuals, communities, and societies.
A history of America's civil rights movement traces the pivotal influence of sexual violence that victimized African American women for centuries, revealing Rosa Parks's contributions as an anti-rape activist years before her heroic bus protest.
Women banana workers have organized themselves and gained increasing control over their unions, their workplaces, and their lives. Bananeras recounts the history and growth of this vital movement and shows how Latin American woman workers are shaping and broadly reimagining the possibilities of international labor solidarity.
An exploration of twentieth and twenty-first century U.S. Muslim womanhood that centers the lived experience of women of color.
An empowering and intersectional history that centers the stories of African American women across 400+ years, showing how they are—and have always been—instrumental in shaping our country.
Disapproving scolds. Sexist condescension. Odd theories about the effect of exercise on reproductive organs. Though baseball began as a gender-neutral sport, girls and women of the nineteenth century faced many obstacles on their way to the diamond. Yet all-female nines took the field everywhere.
Borrowing from Our Foremothers offers a panorama of women's struggles through artifacts to establish connections between the generations of women's right activists. In a thorough historical retelling of the women's movement from 1848 to 2017, Amy Helene Forss focuses on items borrowed from our innovative foremothers, including cartes de visite, clothing, gavels, sculptures, urns, service pins, and torches.
This landmark anthology offers gripping portraits of American life as seen through the eyes of young women of color.
(Fiction) A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia
Nearly fifteen years before the Stonewall Rebellion and the birth of gay liberation came the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB). Like its predominantly gay male counterparts, the Mattachine Society and ONE, Inc., DOB was launched in response to the oppressive antihomosexual climate of the McCarthy era, when lesbian and gay people were arrested, fired from jobs, and had their children taken away simply on the basis of their sexual orientation.
(Fiction) Cristina García’s acclaimed book is the haunting, bittersweet story of a family experiencing a country’s revolution and the revelations that follow.
In Hands on the Freedom Plow, fifty-two women--northern and southern, young and old, urban and rural, black, white, and Latina--share their courageous personal stories of working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement.
(Fiction) The García sisters—Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía—and their family must flee their home in the Dominican Republic after their father’s role in an attempt to overthrow a tyrannical dictator is discovered. They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Caribbean. In the wild and wondrous and not always welcoming U.S.A., their parents try to hold on to their old ways, but the girls try find new lives: by forgetting their Spanish, by straightening their hair and wearing fringed bell bottoms. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating to be caught between the old world and the new
The Combahee River Collective, a path-breaking group of radical black feminists, was one of the most important organizations to develop out of the antiracist and women's liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. In this collection of essays and interviews edited by activist-scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, founding members of the organization and contemporary activists reflect on the legacy of its contributions to Black feminism and its impact on today's struggles.
(Memoir) A Nobel Peace Prize winner reflects on poverty, injustice, and the struggles of Mayan communities in Guatemala, offering “a fascinating and moving description of the culture of an entire people".
An illustrated highlight reel of more than 100 women in rap who have helped shape the genre and eschewed gender norms in the process, The Motherlode "shines a bright light on a history of overlooked female talent and breaks down the ingenuity of our current generation of stars."
My Home As I Remember describes literary and artistic achievements of First Nations, Inuit and Metis women across Canada and the United States, including contributions from New Zealand and Mexico.
Two unsung women whose power using food as a political weapon during the civil rights movement was so great it brought the ire of government agents working against them.
Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature.
Tasteful Domesticity demonstrates how women marginalized by gender, race, ethnicity, and class used the cookbook as a rhetorical space in which to conduct public discussions of taste and domesticity.
(Memoir) The landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education, brought the promise of integration to Little Rock, Arkansas, but it was hard-won for the nine black teenagers chosen to integrate Central High School in 1957. They ran a gauntlet flanked by a rampaging mob and a heavily armed Arkansas National Guard-opposition so intense that soldiers from the elite 101st Airborne Division were called in to restore order.
(Fiction) First published in 1928, this timeless portrayal of lesbian love is now a classic. The thinly disguised story of Hall's own life, it was banned outright upon publication and almost ruined her literary career.
A selection of documentaries on the history of women's involvement in the struggles against discrimination from the library streaming video databases: Kanopy and Films on Demand.
If you haven't accessed Kanopy before, learn how to set up your account in this FAQ.
2018 1hr 37min
When Jennifer Laude, a Filipina transwoman, is brutally murdered by a U.S. Marine, three women intimately invested in the case; an activist attorney, a transgender journalist, and Jennifer’s mother, galvanize a political uprising, pursuing justice and taking on hardened histories of U.S. imperialism.
2018 1hr 01min
Through Stonewall, the feminist movement, and the experimental cinema of the 1970s, lesbian filmmakers built visibility and transformed the social imagination.
2007 53min
After fourteen years of civil war, Liberia is a nation ready for change. On January 16, 2006, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was inaugurated president. She is the first ever elected female Head of State in Africa, winning a hotly contested election with the overwhelming support of women across Liberia.
2022 1hr 42min
The Janes is an insightful documentary that delves into the history and impact of the underground feminist abortion service in the late 1960s and early 1970s, known as the Jane Collective.
1993 1hr 18min
Some genuinely wild women take center stage in Paris Poirier's vivacious and historical documentary about Maud's, the longest-running lesbian bar in the United States.
2017 1 hr. 53 min.
With unprecedented access, filmmakers Bob Hercules and Rita Coburn Whack trace Dr. Maya Angelou’s incredible journey, shedding light on the untold aspects of her life through never-before-seen footage, rare archival photographs and videos and her own words.
2003 57min
Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were partners in love and political struggle for over fifty years. With incisive interviews, rare archival images and warmhearted humor, No Secret Anymore reveals their inspiring public work, as well as their charming private relationship.
2018 1hr 35min
Told first-hand by some of Hollywood's leading voices behind and in front of the camera, THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING uncovers what is beneath one of the most confounding dilemmas in the entertainment industry - the under-representation and misrepresentation of women.
"2019 1hr 47min
Woman is a thought-provoking documentary that explores the lives of women from different backgrounds, cultures, and socio-economic statuses around the world."
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
