Firestone, Shulamith (1945—)
Firestone, Shulamith (1945—)
Canadian feminist . Born in Ottawa, Canada, in 1945; studied at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Selected writings:
The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970); (with Chris Kraus) Airless Spaces (1998).
Shulamith Firestone, who was active as a student in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, gained prominence in the women's movement through her controversial book, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970). During the early 1970s, Firestone also co-founded and was editor of the journals Notes from the Second Year and Redstockings, and she remained active in the New York feminist movement. In 1998, along with Chris Kraus, she published Airless Spaces, a collection of short stories about those who float in and out of institutions. Wrote one reader: "Refusing a career as a professional feminist, Shulamith Firestone found herself in an 'airless space'—since the publication of her first groundbreaking book." Writes Eileen Myles : "In her radical insider's tale, [Firestone] informs us repeatedly like lightly pelting rain that all of us are vanishing in a century of institutions [that] take and take until everyone has gone away and there is no one left to shut the door."