Dear St. Sybil,
What journals and periodicals are on your reading list? To put this another way, can you recommend some good, liberal-radical publications that might be hiding somewhere behind the New Yorker or the Enquirer at the newsstand?
Yours, Hungry for the Real News
Dear Hungry,
You can find real news and real ideas at Off Our Backs, a radical lesbian monthly. The Progressive; In These Times, and Mother Jones, are other monthlies which tell it as the liberal orthodoxy see it. The Utne Reader provides a great service with their monthly compilation culled from all of the radical (leftish) rags, both mainstream and more obscure. The Nation, a weekly, is one of the very best for political and intellectual commentary. It has Katha Pollitt and The Mad Law Professor (Patricia J. Williams) and a great puzzle on the back page that is so hard it puts Sybil to sleep. Ms. Magazine is a wonderful quarterly, so thick and juicy with news and opinion and fiction and poetry from all over the world that it takes a full three months to read it through. If you happen to live in Oklahoma, Frosty Troy’s Oklahoma Observer can’t be beat for updating you on the goings-on at the Capitol.
The Sun is a delightful magazine, moderately liberal and radical, and soothingly intellectual and apolitical. On The Issues was a marvelous feminist monthly which had a strong animal-rights philosophy. It unfortunately is defunct. Sybil hopes that it was not because they once published some of her musings.
If it moves you to send money to Amnesty International, The Humane Society, The Nature Conservancy, The Southern Poverty Law Center, the NAACP, PETA, the Smithsonian, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Equality Now, etc. etc. - all of these and dozens more have wonderful magazines they send to their members which tell the truth, as they see it, about their issues.
There is another quarterly magazine I want to recommend, even though I feel I need to apologize for uttering the name out loud. Bitch is provocative and radical and fun, and jam-packed with interesting reading. It aims to be 100% feminist; although the name will cause some to argue that the founders were misguided in their decision to reclaim the pejorative “bitch”; a word which many feminists would not let pass their lips even when speaking about Nurse Ratchett or Phyllis Schlafly. Still, there is a long history of the oppressed taking power and pride by embracing terms used to put them down, like “dyke” and “queer”, for two. As well, I imagine there was a direct connection intended in the transition between Ms., which it resembles, and their chosen name, as in “That’s Ms. Bitch to you, buddy!” Bitch has hardly any advertising, barely more than Ms., which has none. However, some of that advertising will seem over the top to more traditional (make that older?) feminists. In a nutshell I would say Bitch is Ms. in a jazzier, younger, more sexually open format.
So bon appetit, Hungry-for-Real-News; and good reading.
Love,
Sybil
The retreat features workshops, recreation, entertainment, a potluck dinner and a Saturday evening concert in a women-identified and supportive atmosphere. While we have lots of activities which are listed below, many people come to the retreats and park themselves under a tree with a good book all day; or go off hiking on their own - there is no need or pressure to do anything you don’t want to. All women and girl-children are welcome. No boys over 10, please.