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Copyright by Erin Hurt 2010 The Dissertation Committee for Erin Allison Hurt Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Selling Sisterhood: A Study of Contemporary Feminist Literatures, Communities, and Markets Committee: Ann Cvetkovich, Co-Supervisor Domino Renee Pérez, Co-Supervisor Brian Bremen Matt Richardson Dana Cloud Selling Feminism: A Study of Contemporary Feminist Literatures, Communities, and Markets by Erin Allison Hurt, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2010 Acknowledgements I would not have been able to write this dissertation without the support of so many colleagues and friends. First and foremost, I would like to thank my family, who have encouraged me in this long, arduous process in innumerable ways both small and large: Emily Hurt, Kathy Hurt, and Ron Hurt. Their generosity never ceases to amaze me. I would like to thank the members of my committee for sharing their time, energy, and enthusiasm with me as I shaped this project: Brian Bremen, Matt Richardson, and Dana Cloud. I am especially grateful to my co-directors, Ann Cvetkovich and Domino Renee Pérez, who demanded rigorous scholarship while also allowing me the freedom to make this project my own. They answered my endless questions with patience, held lengthy conversations about process, and offered incisive and productive feedback that helped me develop and hone my ideas. Finally, I would like to thank my friends and colleagues for helping me overcome hurdles and celebrate my progress during this long undertaking. Many thanks to my writing groups, who have helped me to improve my own work through their gracious critiques, and have inspired me with their own amazing projects: Melanie Haupt, Olga Herrera, and Crystal Kurzen. iv For supporting me both inside and outside of the classroom, I would like to thank Brandi Weber (for being the best conversation partner a girl could ever hope for), Blanca May (for putting up with me for twenty-plus years), Lydia Wilmeth (for making me feel loved), Layne Parish Craig (for showing me how thoughtful is done), Patty Burns and Molly Hardy (for letting things be good enough), Jax Cuevas (for all the processing), Nate Kreuter (for being such an excellent cube mate), the many members of the Feminist Solidarity Group, the many other wonderful colleagues who made this experience such a pleasure, and finally, Angus and Bean, for enormous amounts of sleeplove over the course of these past five years. v Selling Feminism: A Study of Contemporary Feminist Literatures, Communities, and Markets Publication No._____________ Erin Allison Hurt, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2010 Supervisors: Ann Cvetkovich and Domino Renee Pérez This dissertation explores how recent feminist authors uses their literature to create, sustain, and expand the feminist movement through their creation of communities and readerships. This project consists of four case studies, each of which examines how a feminist author represents feminist identity, where she locates herself in relation to the mainstream marketplace, which strategies she uses to circulate her representation, and what forms of small and large feminist communities she is able to create. To develop this analysis of feminist literary public culture, I focus on playwright Eve Ensler and her work with the V-Day movement, novelist Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez and her expansion of the chick lit genre, poet Lorna Dee Cervantes and her online small press, and the members of spoken word group Sister Spit and their traveling road show. These individual case studies, taken as a whole, speak to the ways that feminist authors are engaging mainstream and feminist readers in ways that create and energize feminist communities. vi Table of Contents Introduction Charting Feminist Public Culture ................................................1 Chapter One "The word is what sets us free": Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues and the Marketing of the V-Day Movement .......................21 Chapter Two "Latina Like Me": Ambivalence and Ambiguity in the Writing Of Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez ..............................................................................51 Chapter Three "Freedom of the press belongs to the one who owns one": Third Wave Strategies in the Writing of a Second Wave Feminista.................94 Chapter Four "Sort of like music … Sort of like literature": Sister Spit, the Spoken Word, and Live Feminist Community.......................................119 Epilogue ..............................................................................................................152 Bibliography ......................................................................................................163 Vita ..................................................................................................................177 vii Introduction Charting Feminist Public Culture When I began working on this project during the spring of 2008, a number of events took place in the feminist literary public sphere that influenced my thinking about feminist public culture. Feminist authors who were seeking to operate through independent channels faced an increasingly difficult climate in which to disseminate their writing. Feminist literary enterprises—bookstores like Bookwoman in Austin, Texas, presses like South End, and magazines like Bitch—all faced potential closure. Bookwoman, one of the few remaining independent feminist bookstores in the US, and Bitch, a non-profit independent feminist magazine, each needed upwards of $40,000 to stay in business. During these moments, the independent feminist literary community turned to innovative and unconventional solutions to collect these funds. Namely, they turned to their readers. In the case of both Bookwoman and Bitch, considerable grassroots financial support temporarily solved their respective financial woes and gave both feminist establishments the breathing room to conceive of new, more sustainable business models.1 South End Press, in an effort to ward off these same kind of financial troubles, instituted a Community Supported Publishing (CSP) program. In exchange for a monthly membership fee, CSP subscribers would receive each new title that South End published. In exchange, South End Press would receive a constant, consistent flow of financial support. The struggles of these organizations are indicative of the difficulties currently 1 Bitch adopted a more sustainable, non-profit centered publishing model that focused on engaging their readers and building community (Maestretti). Bookwoman, after raising enough money through individual and community fundraisers, moved to a new location. The store began to feature events geared towards bringing in new customers, and publicized them by establishing a social networking presence. 1 faced by the independent publishing market. These entities were able to successfully resolve their problems through greater engagement with their reading communities. At the same time, feminist literature was seeing enormous success in the mainstream. Eve Ensler was celebrating a decade of growth for V-Day, the nonprofit she started in 1998 to combat violence against women. V-Day organizes performances of Ensler’s play, The Vagina Monologues (1998), on Valentine’s Day, with all profits going to local anti-violence organizations. In the ten years since V-Day began, countless performances of Ensler’s play have taken place on college campuses and in other community venues, and the non-profit has raised millions of dollars in the process. The Vagina Monologues has come to be an established part of U.S. culture. One of the most successful phenomena within the field of women’s commercial fiction was the appearance and rapid growth of the chick lit genre. Though feminist opinions about this genre varied—some saw it as representing contemporary women’s lives, while others saw it as advocating for conspicuous consumption—most could agree that these literary works had developed huge audiences. This year marked the release of Dirty Girls On Top (2009), Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s sequel to her New York Times bestseller, The Dirty Girls Social Club (2003). Valdes-Rodriguez’s success marked not only an expansion of the chick lit genre into the field of Latina chick lit, but also a broadening of the field of Latina literature as well. Her novel portrayed upper class college-educated Latinas navigating careers, love, and friendships. This novel’s portrayal of Latinidad appealed to a variety of readers. The characters’ ethnicities made them different but not too different from mainstream white audiences, while Latina readers identified with a version of Latina identity that they could not find in either mainstream or Latina literature. The novel’s ability to appeal to different communities made it a crossover success in the commercial publishing market. 2 Feminism had established a strong online presence. Feminist sites like Feministing, Jezebel, Feministe, Racialicious, BlogHer, and La Bloga, as well as a number of individual blogs, offered news and analysis of the feminist movement. New media offered feminist writers innovative and unfettered ways for them to share their writing with readers. At the same time, the online feminist community faced some of the same conflicts as its offline predecessor. In the early months