The Issue Is Power

by Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

essays on women, Jews, violence, and resistance

Genres: Jewish, Feminism, Nonfiction, LGBT, Social Justice

320 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1992

About the author

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz is a writer and poet, activist, scholar and teacher. A pioneer in women's studies, she taught the first such course at the University of California at Berkeley in Comparative Literature, where she earned her Ph.D. Since then she has taught all over the U.S., twice as a distinguished chair--at Hamilton College and at Brooklyn College/CUNY--and in fields as diverse as Jewish Studies, Women's Studies, Urban Studies, Race Theory, Public Policy, Gender and Queer Studies. For five years she directed the Queens College/CUNY Worker Education Extension Center in Manhattan. She currently teaches at Queens College in Jewish Studies, History and Comparative Literature, and recently taught in the Bard College Prison Initiative. Born and raised in Brooklyn, a graduate of City College/CUNY, Melanie worked in the Harlem Civil Rights Movement as a teenager, and continues to be active in progressive movements, anti-war, lgbt, feminism, anti-racism, labor. She gave up a tenured teaching position to return to New York to work against racism in the Jewish community.

Reviews

[Ezra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my #1 favorite book. It was really life-changing to read. M K/K offers such brilliant and truly accessible personal/political/cultural analysis. I cannot recommend this book enough.

[niko · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The haunting question: Do victims only wait their turn? What does it mean to be a victim? How does/can one use violence to free oneself? And then how does one stop? When is one strong enough to stop? And the stunning question that encompasses all other questions: Is history of no use? I write because I need history to be of some use." !!!