This is a fascinating window into the development of the women's movement in the words of those who moved it. Compiled and introduced by the UK-based anarchist collective Dark Star, Quiet Rumours features articles and essays from four generations of anarchist-inspired feminists, including Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre, Jo Freeman, Peggy Kornegger, Cathy Levine, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Mujeres Creando, Rote Zora, and beyond. All the pieces from the first two editions are included here, as well as new material bringing third and so-called fourth-wave feminism into conversation with twenty-first century politics. An ideal overview for budding feminists and an exciting reconsideration for seasoned radicals.
Dark Star Collective: The Dark Star Collective was a UK-based anarchist group dedicated to keeping small anarchist-oriented pamphlets and publications available "from your local bookshop." The are perhaps most well known for their two anthologies, both originally published in the UK by Rebel Press, and later reprinted by AK Press, Beneath the Paving Stones: Situationists and the Beach, and Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-Feminist Reader.
Emma Goldman: One of the most beloved and hated anarchist agitators of all times, Emma Goldman was a Russian immigrant who played a key role in the birth and development of an American anarchist movement in the first decades of the 20th century. Known as a rebel, a labor agitator, an ardent proponent of birth control and free speech, a feminist, a lecturer and a writer, Goldman is the author of countless essays, as well as several collections of writings published posthumously, and her 2-volume autobiography,
Living My Life.
Voltairine de Cleyre: Called "A brief comet in the anarchist firmament, blazing out quickly and soon forgotten by all but a small circle of comrades whose love and devotion persisted long after her death," by Paul Avrich, Voltairine de Cleyre was a little-known, but crucial link in the early American anarchist milieu of the 20th century. A poet and essayist, de Cleyre was plagued all her life by poverty, pain, and ill health, and died prematurely at the age of 45 in 1912.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is a historian and professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at California State University, Hayward. She is the author of Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie (Verso), The Great Sioux Nation, and Roots of Resistance, among other books.
Jo Freeman: Jo Freeman is author of A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics, The Politics of Women's Liberation, and At Berkeley in the Sixties. She is the coeditor of Waves of Protest and editor of Social Movements of the Sixties and Seventies and five editions of Women: A Feminist Perspective.
