Daring to Hope
My Life in the 1970s
Published on 9. November 2021
Book
Hardback
336 pages
978-1-83976-389-2 (ISBN)
Description
In this powerful memoir Sheila Rowbotham looks back at her life as a participant in the women's liberation movement, left politics and the creative radical culture of a decade in which freedom and equality seemed possible. She reveals the tremendous efforts that were made to transform attitudes and feelings, as well as daily life.
After addressing the first British Women's Liberation Conference at Ruskin College, Oxford in 1970, she went on to encourage night cleaners to unionise, to campaign for nurseries and abortion rights. She played an influential role in discussions of socialist feminist ideas and her books and journalism attracted an international readership.
Written with generosity and humour Daring to Hope recreates grassroots networks, communal houses and squats, bringing alive a shared impetus to organise collectively and to love without jealousy or domination. It conveys the shifts occurring in politics and society through kernels of personal experience. The result is a book about liberation in the widest sense.
After addressing the first British Women's Liberation Conference at Ruskin College, Oxford in 1970, she went on to encourage night cleaners to unionise, to campaign for nurseries and abortion rights. She played an influential role in discussions of socialist feminist ideas and her books and journalism attracted an international readership.
Written with generosity and humour Daring to Hope recreates grassroots networks, communal houses and squats, bringing alive a shared impetus to organise collectively and to love without jealousy or domination. It conveys the shifts occurring in politics and society through kernels of personal experience. The result is a book about liberation in the widest sense.
Reviews / Votes
Rowbotham is one of Britain's most important, if unshowy, feminist thinkers, and a key figure of the second wave. -- Melissa Benn Rowbotham is a leading feminist historian, and an unapologetic utopian -- Barbara Taylor * Guardian * Rowbotham has a marvelous gift for explication and an eye for the illuminating quotation. -- Elaine Showalter * Daily Telegraph * For Rowbotham, women's liberation was bound up with the dismantling of capitalism. But it also required-and here they departed from the Old Guard left-a rethinking of everyday patterns of life, relating to sex, love, housework, child rearing. -- Amia Srinivasan * New Yorker * Frank, powerful and vibrant. -- Rachel Collett * Tribune * Daring to Hope captures [Rowbotham's] youthful Utopian spirit. In it, she looks back at a decade of social change and recounts her experiences on the frontline of feminism. -- Rosa Silverman * Telegraph * Thoroughly engaging...I felt aligned with the frank and personal account of a young woman's life changing throughout the decade. -- Cathy Crabb * Northern Soul * A deeply compelling story about the making of our own times ... Rowbotham's humanity and craft shines through. -- Rana Mitter * BBC History Magazine's Books of the Year 2021 * Rowbotham has wisdom - and wit. -- Yvonne Roberts * Observer * Rewarding. -- Clare Griffiths * Times Literary Supplement * [Daring to Hope] shows us what is possible, but that it is our job to go out and do it. -- Lydia Hughes * Red Pepper * A very enjoyable read, chronicling the ways in which the author engaged with the increasing challenges of the 1970s, while maintaining her hopes for an alternative future -- Marjorie Mayo * Morning Star Online * Exciting ... I read it over a weekend. -- Ross Bradshaw * The Spokesman Journal * Beautifully-measured account of a radical decade ... [Rowbotham] meets and makes friends with suffragettes, old communists and an ageless Dora Russell. This book is a valuable bridge between today's feminism and that of our forebears. -- Erica Smith * Peace News *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Illustrations
+ 16pp b&w plate section
Dimensions
Height: 218 mm
Width: 149 mm
Thickness: 31 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-83976-389-2 (9781839763892)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
11/2021
Verso Books
€28.99
Available for download
Person
Sheila Rowbotham, who helped start the women's liberation movement in Britain, is known internationally as an historian of feminism and radical social movements. She is the author of the ground-breaking books Women, Resistance and Revolution; Woman's Consciousness, Man's World; and Hidden from History. Her other works include Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century; the biography Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love, shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize and winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Biography, and Rebel Crossings: New Women, Free Lovers and Radicals in Britain and the United States. Verso have also reissued her memoir Promise of a Dream: Remembering the Sixties, as part of the Feminist Classic series. Her latest book is Daring to Hope: My Life in the 1970s. Her poetry and two plays have been published and she has written for newspapers and journals in Britain, the US, Italy, Brazil, Turkey, Sweden and Sri Lanka. She lives in Bristol.