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Authors of autobiographies are always engaged in creating a "self" to present to their readers. This process of self-creation raises a number of intriguing questions: why and how does anyone choose to present herself or himself in an autobiography? Do women and men represent themselves in different ways and, if so, why? How do differences in culture affect the writing of autobiography in various parts of the world?

This book tackles these questions through a close examination of Arab women's autobiographical writings. Nawar Al-Hassan Golley applies a variety of western critical theories, including Marxism, colonial discourse, feminism, and narrative theory, to the autobiographies of Huda Shaarawi, Fadwa Tuqan, Nawal el-Saadawi, and others to demonstrate what these critical methodologies can reveal about Arab women's writing. At the same time, she also interrogates these theories against the chosen texts to see how adequate or appropriate these models are for analyzing texts from other cultures. This two-fold investigation sheds important new light on how the writers or editors of Arab women's autobiographies have written, documented, presented, and organized their texts.

In Refounding Democracy through Intersectional Activism, Wendy Sarvasy recovers the unacknowledged Progressive Era social democratic feminist refounders who used collective political agency to reshape the body politic. Through intersectional activism, or the bridging of different movements, the refounders, who include Ida Wells-Barnett, Rose Schneiderman, and Jane Addams, created an intersectional, social democratic feminist understanding of democracy that allowed them to imagine their full inclusion.

Sarvasy shows how these activists worked to incorporate women by combining political democracy with the creation of a welfare state. They embedded this nation-state project within a new humanitarian transnational level as they evolved their multileveled social citizenship.

Refounding Democracy through Intersectional Activism demonstrates how a theory-activist dynamic played out in experimental socializing spaces and democratic conversations. It offers an inspirational method for intersectional activists today.

Revolutionary Feminists tells the story of the radical women’s liberation movement in Seattle in the 1960s and 1970s from the perspective of a founding member, Barbara Winslow. Drawing on her collection of letters, pamphlets, and photographs as well as newspaper accounts, autobiographies, and interviews, Winslow emphasizes the vital role that Black women played in the women’s liberation movement to create meaningful intersectional coalitions in an overwhelmingly White city. Winslow brings the voices and visions of those she calls the movement’s “ecstatic utopians” to life. She charts their short-term successes and lasting achievements, from organizing women at work and campaigning for subsidized childcare to creating women-centered rape crisis centers, health clinics, and self-defense programs. The Seattle movement was essential to winning the first popular vote in the United States to liberalize abortion laws. Despite these achievements, Winslow critiques the failure of the movement's White members to listen to Black, Latina, Indigenous, and Asian American and Pacific Islander feminist activists. Reflecting on the Seattle movement’s accomplishments and shortcomings, Winslow offers a model for contemporary feminist activism.