Post from Kathleen: Amelia Bloomer Project Breakfast

Meetings, meetings, meetings, hugs from people met over 40 years in librarianship, time with friends and no time with friends, that’s ALA annual conference. Exhaustion is beginning to set in. I am behind in my blog posts and will report on the meetings I attended on Saturday later.

Sunday morning, and I am now at the Amelia Bloomer Project breakfast. The America Bloomer Project, feminist books for young readers, is a committee of ALA’s Feminist Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table. The Bloomer project began in 2001 and has produced eight lists of recommended books. There are nine people on the committee from all types of libraries across the USA and in all positions – they proudly boast that the group includes a cataloger. The committee members select books with “a strong feminist message” for youth from birth to 18 from the previous years publications. This year there were 400 titles submitted to the committee, 128 nominated and 68 recommended and included on the annotated list. For more information on the project, to access their blog and to see the lists go to http://libr.org/ftf/bloomer.html. I know there are problems with the live links in my blog posts so I will also post this and other URLs as links to the blog.

This breakfast, held every other year, is one of those small energizing events I cherish at ALA. There are about forty people here. I don’t see anyone I have seen at the other women’s or feminist meetings I’ve attended. We each paid $30 to eat bagels and fruit, hear two speakers and be in one another’s company. A colleague from my days at Chicago Public Library now teaching at Tennessee sits next to me and we catch up. We also talk with a first time conference go-er who is a cataloger at a small academic library, and a public library director who started her job last Monday. Why are they here? – “just sounded interesting.” The program moderator urges us to think about feminism, role models both male and female, heroes and she-roes and female superheroes. I feel right at home.

The moderator also talks about Amelia Bloomer (1818-1894), the first woman to own and publish a newspaper for women. She didn’t invent the bloomer costume (tunic and pantaloons) but wrote about it in her paper and the costume took on her name. Suffragists stopped wearing the Bloomers because too much attention was being pad to their clothing and not enough attention was being given to the issues. The moderator reminded us that while pants might not be a big deal now she remembered when women had to wear dresses to work. So do I.

Sarah Bornstein, the first speaker, discusses the successes and failures of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union whose 8 year existence had a major impact on individuals involved, including me, and on the women’s movement. The Union lives on in cyberspace and you can check out the website at http://www.cwluherstory.org. Bornstein sees feminism as being about choices. She cautioned against badges and symbols becoming more important than the work we do as feminists.

Author Laurie Halse Anderson gave a moving talk about the women who raised her, especially her mother. They gave conflicting messages. Their words were words of conformity to the norm of male supremacy, girdles and domesticity but their actions were different. They were strong and funny and talented. Female characters in the books Anderson read gave clearer messages of strength and self-determination. All are spirit grandmothers for Anderson.

Both speakers got standing ovations and everyone left enriched by an experience in which it is OK to assume that everyone, both men and women, can be feminists.