Avital H. Bloch and Lauri Umansky,
Editors
Impossible to Hold: Women and
Culture in the 1960s
New York and London, New York
University Press, 2005 February,
326+22 pages with About the
Contributors and Index
ISBN 0-8147-9909-4, 65 $ (hardcover)
ISBN 0-8147-9910-8, 22 $ (paperback)
Dimensions: 9.3×6.8×1.0 inches
Impossible to
Hold: Women and Culture in the 1960s
edited by Avital Bloch and Lauri Umansky (New York & London: New York
University Press, 2005.) is the new Gutenbergian product of the NYU Press
series in American History and Culture under the general editorship
of Neil Foley, Kevin Gaines, Martha Hodes, and Scott Sandage. Avital Bloch
is Research Professor at the Center for Social Research University of Colima,
Mexico, director of the U.S. Studies Program and coordinator of the M.A. in
History. Lauri Umansky is Professor of History at Suffolk University and
author of “Motherhood Reconceived: Feminism and the Legacies of the
Sixties.” Impossible to Hold is a smart collection of essays written
by academics of caliber on space exploration, sports, music, architecture,
politics, religion, literature, and performing arts with special focus on
more or less known women of the long decade known as “the sixties” in the
United States. The overall aim of the book is to “trace the activities of
women whose lives and work intersected with the culture of the decade in
significant ways,” while keeping it separately from the political activism
involved in the general “story of feminism’s roots and routes.” (2) This
interdisciplinary collection of sixteen essays, mostly in underexplored
topics, presents an array of illuminating answers to the emergence of the
“gendered cultural revolution” that occurred in the cultural context of the
period.
The book is
divided into four organically bound parts. The first part of the book
entitled “Break” encompasses the figures of women who broke into traditional
‘male’ fields. Margaret A. Weitekamp groundbreaking essay “ ‘The
Astronautrix’ and the ‘Magnificent Male’: Jerrie Cobb’s Quest to Be the
First Woman in America’s Manned Space Program” (9-28) brings into the
limelight the unabridged story of Geraldine “Jerrie” Cobb, who was the first
American woman astronaut, “the austronautrix” that passed the physical
examination of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in
1961 but was not allowed to fly on suborbital space mission on veiled gender
premises that deliberately constructed the “astronaut/jet test pilot as
masculine” (18). In the icy atmosphere of the Cold War, and especially that
of the 1959 “kitchen debate” between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev,
when the American ideology depicted Soviet women as de-feminized and
masculine workers versus the image of the American woman as feminine,
maternal and very much domestic, Jerrie Cobb as possible “astronautrix” “ran
afoul of the gendered limits on Cold War patriotism” (16). In 1963 the
Soviet Union sent in mission a woman, the cosmonaut Valentine Tereshkova,
who became the first woman in space. This event placed the communist country
at a genderly ideological advantage and highlighted the lacunas in the
practices of equality of sexes in the U.S. during the beginning of the
sixties. In “Building Utopia: Mary Otis Stevens and the Lincoln,
Massachusetts, House,” Susana Tore (29-42) examines the life, career and
some of the projects of Mary Otis Stevens, a maverick woman architect, who
courageously challenged the dominant practices of post-Housing Act (1949)
and post-Highway Trust Act (1959) of slum clearances and homogenous
residential suburbs and subsequently questioned the discursive practices of
architecture concerning “critical domesticity” (30) with their house of psychogeographical topography at Lincoln, Massachusetts (1962-65). “Life on
the Cusp: Lynda Huey and Billie Jean King” by James Pipkin (43-64) focuses
on the figures of the tennis star Billie Jean King and college sprinter
Lynda Huey, in a period when “the American living room became the nation’s
real sports arena” (43). These women had to fight their body battles under
the scrutiny of the public eye and cultural expectations. The society of the
1950s and 1960s greatly misinterpreted their athletic bodies, the site of
their cultural beliefs and values, and labeled them as “masculine.” The
dominant cultural discourse of the period questioned their sexuality on the
basis of their muscles; King and Huey rebelled against the ideology of the
feminine mystique and managed to make compatible the image of the athlete
and the woman into that of the “strong woman” (62). Zina Petersen in
“Balancing Act: Ursula Kroeber Le Guin” (65-77) ventures into the life and
literary work of Ursula Kroeber LeGuin. Le Guin was interested in bringing
science fiction, fantasy and children’s literature from the marginal status
of the “ghetto” genres (75) into the centre of attention and mainstream
literature through multiple means of popular culture. Working in a genre
area of male predominance she successfully fused futurism, and Tao
philosophy with radical, cutting-edge issues of gender, race and class in
the antiwar, ecofeminist climate of revolutionary ethos of the sixties’
America.
The second
part of the collection, “Bridge,” reveals the women behind artistic and
diplomatic actions, personalities that built special bridges between
cultures. “Ambassadors with Hips: Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, and the
Allure of Africa in the Black Arts Movement” by Julia Foulkes (81-96)
describe the less known diplomatic route of two African American
dancer-anthropologists from the U.S. to Liberia and Senegal and back to the
U.S. Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus were dance performers who used their
art in education and community leadership; their activity−rooted in the
cultural traditions of Africa and the Caribbean−became one of the
ideological core sources of the Black Arts Movement in the U.S. By
disseminating the art of dance through education and choreography these two
African American women became involved in politics as “ambassadors with
hips” (95) that helped building and maintaining cultural ties with African
countries and the urban contexts of the sixties’ America. Roxanne Power
Hamilton in “Take Everyone to Heaven with Us: Anna Waldman’s Poetry
Cultures” (98-125) uncovers fascinating details about the background of
Waldman’s networks in poetry cultures, especially the New York City context.
Waldman was more than a performance poet involved in the act of “personal is
political” (111); in the vortex of the Vietnam War and the overall turmoil
of the sixties Anna Waldman co-founded with Allen Ginsberg (her roommate
with whom she entered a “spiritual marriage”) the Jack Kerouac School of
Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado and helped building St. Mark Poetry
project in New York City, two progressive, counter-cultural poetry
institutions. In a predominantly male world of alternative poets, she became
a leader poetess who believed in the power of live speech and presence of
the voice rooted in “sane poetry that broadens the practice beyond the
careerist focus of most traditional M.F.A. programs” (120). The coeditor of
the volume, Avital Bloch takes the reader into the colorful and less visible
political world of the radical and pacifist singer Joan Baez in “Joan Baez:
A Singer and Activist” (126-151). The essay deserves a rich epithet for the
style appropriate to its theme; it highlights the moderating role of a
cultural “icon of the era” (144) in bridging over to the post-sixties
generation(s). Baez, as a racial and gendered “other” was able to appeal to
the white, mainstream America by evoking through her traditionally flavored
music and her rural simplicity a sense of national unity. She was behind the
ascent of Bob Dylan’s career; she provoked the general public (and even the
feminists) with her 1968 anti-draft involvement poster of “Girls say Yes to
Boys who say No;” her commitment to nonviolence, her leftist inclinations
and political maturity made Baez participant in several demonstrations,
media boycotts, and risky acts of civil disobedience; she was a prominent
anti-Vietnam War activist and played an important role in organizing Amnesty
International in the U.S. Her songs were political protests on “personal
themes written from a woman’s perspective” (137). Bloch’s elegant essay
reveals Joan Baez’s charismatic character that epitomized the rare balance
between radical transformation, revolution, and the essence of tradition and
continuity. The “Bridge” part of the book concludes with “ ‘Ain’t No
Mountain High Enough:’ Diana Ross as American Pop-Cultural Icon of the
1960s” by Jaap Kooijman (125-173). Diana Ross is seen by Kooijman as a
glamorous and glittering pop-cultural phenomenon situated at the crossroads
of the multifold currents of the sixties. The lady image of Ross and the
Supremes pop group helped the transformation of some class-based racial
stereotypes into gendered ones during the sixties. For African Americans of
both genders, the essay pinpoints passim, Diana Ross functioned as a role
model of racial empowerment. The image of Ross for white audiences appeared
on a more complex level and this is the issue that Kooijman only
tangentially treats here. The essay touches on the issue of the racial and
gender crossover function of the singer that became an icon of the times as
the result of a male-dominated production and gives only hints on why Diana
Ross was for white female teenagers an attractive black image to follow in
her posture of both “girl and woman, both sexy and respectable, both black
and white” (161). The essay, however, is successful in presenting the
complexity of Ross’s star image−who, as a career woman of color, was the
impersonation of the racial integration and upward social mobility in the
sixties−also implied the passive, assertive image of the black woman
indirectly involved in politics.
“Confront” is
the third part of the book focusing on women who openly fought against
institutional power and achieved radical changes. “The Choices before Us:
Anita M. Caspary and the Immaculate Heart Community” by Susan Marie Maloney
(177-195) is the cultural portray of Anita M. Caspary, the Mother General of
the Immaculate heart of Mary Sisters (IHMs) of California (“Hollywood” nuns)
and the president of the Immaculate Heart Community. It was under her
leadership−and by the winds of change initiated by the Second Vatican
Council−that the IHM sisters took action; they opposed and rejected the
interference of the Roman Catholic male hierarchy in their activity and
life. They have created a new ecumenical community of women and men in the
renewed vision of the modern world of the sixties based on “ideals of
voluntary communal bonds, gender equality, female leadership, commitment to
community work, and a faith-life based on individual preference and not
institutional affiliation” (189). In “Shaping the Sixties: The Emergence of
Barbara Deming” by Judith McDaniel (196-216) the reader gets acquainted with
the lesbian poet, essayist and film critic Barbara Deming, who became widely
known because of her open confrontation with Fidel Castro on the issue of
human rights in 1960s Cuba. Deming was a revolutionary person that lived the
fervor of the sixties’ revolution(s); she struggled to reconcile her
sexuality with the social expectations of the times and culture she lived
in. Born in a wealthy New York City family Deming became a civil rights
activist that never accepted paternalistic authority and was committed, as
many other women depicted in this collection of essays, to non-violence and
political and social justice. Tamara Levitz offers a distinctive Yoko Ono
perspective in “Yoko Ono and the Unfinished Music of ‘John & Yoko’:
Imagining Gender and Racial Equality in the Later 1960s” (217-239). Levitz
depicts the biographical and successful performative background of the
Japanese-American Yoko Ono in her pre-John Lennon years in order to show the
huge alternative artistic potentials of Yoko. The article then focuses on
the Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins project (1968) of the two
artists and goes beyond the media representations and the scandal of the
album’s groundbreaking nude cover, as well as over the anti-Yoko Ono actions
in the U.K. and in the U.S. in the sixties. Yoko Ono defended her
heterosexual stance and proudly exhibited the plea for sexual liberation,
together with John Lennon, through the image of the racially mixed couple.
Throughout their common projects (Two Virgins, Plastic Ono Band,
Imagine and Fly) and even after John’s death, Yoko never
stopped to fight for her vision of gender and racial equality. In the
thought-provoking “ ‘Hanoi Jane’ Lives: The 1960s Legacy of Jane Fonda”
(241-258) Barbara L. Tischler reflects on the controversial images of Jane
Fonda starting with that of the childhood “Lady Jane” to that of the 1968
Roger Vadim created intergalactic sex goddess Barbarella to that of the
“Workout Queen” and culminating in the “Hanoi Jane” legacy of the actress
that targeted her as a treacherous American. In the sixties (after her
marriage with activist Tom Hayden) Fonda became a politically very active
person who uncritically accepted the ideologies of the antiwar movements,
American Indian Movements and the Black Panther Party. After Fonda’s visit
in North Vietnam (1972), she was likened to the figure of the legendary
Tokyo Rose because by again uncritically immersing herself in the “radical
sixties Zeitgeist” she transformed herself into a “North Vietnamese
peasant and soldier in the face of American military might and power in the
world” (250). Later she reevaluated her ‘damaged’ image in the context of
the Vietnam War when she played in the film Coming Home (1987) and
further politicized her role in The China Syndrome (1979) and in
Nine to Five (1980). However, as Tischler points out, the quantity of
the anti-Jane material currently on the internet shows that Fonda’s legacy
is still under dispute. In 2005−the year when the collection Impossible
to Hold comes out−the controversial figure of the feminine Jane Fonda,
the ex-wife of media mogul Ted Turner that features ‘GI Jane’ Barbarella on
the cover encodes the political stance of the book as such in the context of
the ongoing War on Terror. To the generation of the sixties used to reading
political significance of covers this ‘front’ design is not by chance.
The final
part of the volume, “Connect,” exposes the figures of Sonia Sanchez, Dianne
McIntyre and Judy Chicago. In “ ‘I Feel the Earth Move’: Carole King,
Tapestry, and the Liberated Woman” (261-278) Judy Kutulas opens up the
musical world of Carole King, a Brooklyn-born Jewish singer who embodied a
special kind of feminism best described by the term of “muted feminism”
(269) and celebrated women’s difference from men in an apolitical way,
through the tacit qualities of intimacy and earthiness. Her landmark album,
Tapestry album with special regard the song “I Feel the Earth Move”
were at the core of King’s sexual empowerment where sex was seen as
“natural, normal” set of “desirable, exciting feelings and orgasmic sounds”
(270). Taking seriously into consideration the female audience King voiced
in her art the complex post-1960s image of the liberated woman: she was
perceived as sexy and independent, while being at the same time womanly and
domestic. Michelle Nzadi Keita’s short article celebrates the activist
figure of the African American poet Sonia Sanchez in “Sonia Sanchez:
‘Fearless about the World’ ” (279-291). Keita focuses on the effects of
Sanchez’s life and militant activism in her poetry and that have placed her
among the poet-activists of the decade. “A Beacon for the People: The
Sixties in Dianne McIntyre” by Veta Goler (292-304) and “Judy Chicago in the
1960s” by Gail Levin (305-326) are the last two articles of the book. Dianne
McIntyre was one among the few prominent African American woman performance
artists after Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus. Her modern dance
choreographies shaped the artistic facet of the struggle for racial and
gender equality on the part of women in the sixties that−as alluding to the
cover and subtitle of the book− “weren’t held back anymore” (303). Judy
Chicago was a painter and visual artist whose major political concern
entailed the situation of women artists. While teaching at the Fresno State
College she planned to set up an off campus class for women only in order to
escape the presence and “expectations of men” (318). Afterwards, she and
Miriam Schapiro and their women students established the pioneering
“Womanhouse” in order to challenge gender stereotypes and raise women’s
consciousness during best times for the emergence of feminism in the visual
arts. The Dinner Party multimedia installation project on the history
of women in Western civilization followed, which since has become canonized
and is featured in “nearly every introductory art history textbook” (321).
Impossible to
Hold
is an intelligent journey in the American world of the sixties; it unravels
a wide spectrum of women’s lives that succeeded to alter the grand
narratives of the time; it seeks to take up the issues where the mainstream,
dominant discourse left off. The world of the book maps−in Kathleen
Stewart’s words−gender spaces “on the side of the [American] road” that one
reads with the pleasure of discovering new terrains from old issues.
Imposible to Hold weaves the reader into a palimpsest of stories that
are read above academic compulsion. The book presents useful cultural
vehicles for understanding the sixties in the shape of sixteen
well-documented, intellectually challenging essays about women at
economical, political, and ideological crossroads. This volume is a
substantial contribution to the field of contemporary American Studies. What
may count as weakness in another book is administered as strength here: the
book’s fragmented structure and its form can be read as a tribute to the
polyphonic culture of the sixties in America. In the context of polyphony
and the current impetus for a more internationalized American Studies, the
theme of the collection would have welcomed a more international
perspective. With the exception of few articles written from non-US based
scholars (Mexico, Holland, UK) the women of the sixties are analyzed from
within the critical context of the U.S. academic scholarship. This may be a
point to remember when further expanding the volume to the seventies,
eighties, nineties women of America, a version many of us would welcome
after reading Impossible to Hold. The book provides useful and
simulating reading material for undergraduate, graduate and even
post-graduate levels in American Studies, gender studies and cultural
studies in general, and can seriously be considered as basic course-book in
specific courses on women’s studies, civil rights movements and other
courses pertaining to American Studies; it can also be built as basic and
secondary reading in the curricular material on more general courses in the
field of studies about the U.S.
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