Changing Woman

Karen Anderson is Associate Professor of History at the University of Arizona.

"Anderson shows how dramatically different the discrimination experience and the struggle for equality are for women in three ethnic groups, Native American, Mexican American, and African American....Anderson's rich, exciting book highlights their specific problems, shows how racism undermines their efforts at achieving equality, and provides a historical perspective for a better understanding of the current situations of these women."--Booklist"Anderson understands fully the complexity and intricacy of the double and triple binds that have shaped the lives of minority women in America. Her book provides a wonderful opportunity to assess the rich variety of women's experience, and to understand with more precision how the structural constraints of race, class, and gender have functioned to shape women's lives."--William H. Chafe, Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Duke University"Karen Anderson's Changing Woman replicates the phrase's meaning in Navajo--a symbol of cyclical change and improvement, a beneficent deity. Her weighty treatment of the cultural situations through history of Native American, Mexican American, and African American women is a treasure of information and insight. This is another wonderful resource for readers of women's history."--Linda Wagner-Martin, Hanes Professor of English and ComparativeLiterature, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill"In demonstrating that 'there is no one pattern in the ways women of color have struggled for equality,' Karen Anderson places Native American, Mexican American, and African American women at the center of her analysis. She offers, thereby, a sobering portrait of both the accomplishments and failures of the feminist movement. Anderson's insightful concentration on the 'women who live at the margins of political and cultural power' forces us to rethinkeverything we thought we knew about the history of women in twentieth-century America."--Annette Kolodny, author of The Lay of the Land and The Land Before Her