To read the early accounts of her life, you would think that the most remarkable thing about Josefa de Óbidos’ art was the fact that she was a woman. Certainly, she defied the conventions of her moment in 17th-century Portugal—where it was assumed that men painted and preached, bought and sold, fought wars and thought big thoughts, while the fairer…
The Moral Vision of Dorothy Day: A Feminist Perspective June E. O’Connor Crossroad, 1991 Book Review At first blush, Dorothy Day wouldn’t seem to make much of a feminist. “Women’s liberation,” she told an interviewer in 1975, “is too self-centered. It’s not geared to the poor but to articulate middle-class women with time on their hands, the ones who have…
Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story Directed by Michael Ray Rhodes Paulist Pictures, 1996 Film Review It’s too bad the new film biography of Dorothy Day has only a hearsay acquaintance with her life. Because Catholics and others could use a timely retelling of Day’s dramatic story—which reads like the life of an ancient saint updated for 20th–century America. Growing up…
There is controversy stirring in the basement of the U.S. Capitol. Literally. It has to do with an eight-ton marble statue commemorating three pioneers of the women’s movement—Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. After women were finally granted the right to vote in August 1920, the National Women’s Party, in a celebratory mood, donated the statue to…
Outside, the old neighbor lady pokes her head out the door. Clutching the sweater she’s pulled around her nightgown, she shuffles to the end of the porch and peers down the alley, calling for something. A fat white cat emerges in a slow trot and moseys around the base of the porch, up the steps and into the house. The…
The tall, frail woman in the wheelchair lifted her hands high above her head in praise. She was plainly tired and in pain, but her countenance was as radiant as the brightly colored African robe she wore. In a deep, soulful voice, she was leading a song: “Oh, deep in my heart, I know, I do believe, we shall overcome…