For years I’ve been interested in researching Midwestern women’s publications of the late 20th century.  I recently visited the Women’s Archives at the University of Iowa Libraries in Iowa City to read Ain’t I a Woman?, an underground feminist newspaper published from 1970-74 by the Publishing Collective, Iowa City Women’s Liberation Front.  (Later it was known as the AIAW collective.)

The paper peripherally influenced me when I was growing up in Iowa City in the 1970s.

It was a time of radical politics, feminism, consciousness-raising,  protests, underground papers, and experimentation with sex and/or drugs.  Describing the most insignificant political action requires much backstory. The volunteers and the kids from Dum-dum Day Care Center,  a co-op with no paid employees, participated in a takeover of the basement of Burge Hall to demonstrate the need for university housing of the day care co-ops.  (I was there.)  Yup, that’s the kind of thing that’s hard to explain in one sentence.

Reading AIAW was a gamble.  The language in some feminist books of the 1970s (try Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex) is stilted and incoherent, Marxist and strident.  I have a low tolerance for words like “elitism,” “”imperialist,” and “co-option.”

But AIAW supasssed my expectations.  It is a well-written newspaper. Many of the writers are talented, and I wonder if they went on to write elsewhere. The language is often rich, but also raw.  The writers experiment with language as they try to express their feelings about the changes they experience in the collective. There are  personal essays, long analyses of class and sexualtiy, and long articles reprinted from other underground papers

In the first issue of AIAW (June, 2, 1970), the collective speaks in an editorial about the beginnings of the paper.

There are special reasons, however, why we needed a paper for and by women.  All of us tend not only to be without confidence in this area but also without developed ability. We need to develop all kinds of abilities and know we have not been able to do this working jointly with men.  We would tend to do mostly shit work even if this wasn’t imposed on us.  We would volunteer for it since we don’t feel the confidence to do more statusy work.

I found this very touching.  I am more interested in narrative than political analysis, and much of what gives AIAW its clout  is the quality of the narrative.  Yes, it was common knowledge that women were not given top positions in the radical groups of the ’60s, but here it is, described clearly and plainly, not stridently, as I had feared, and later they elaborate on the theme through vulnerable personal writing as well as analysis of sex and feminism.

The first editorial page was signed by first names: Vickie, Pat, Debbie, Dale, Linda, Penny, Lori, Julie, Carol, Anne, Sue.  (And if I’ve missed anyone, blame my pencil-scribble notes..)  There is a fascinating article written, I think, by my friend’s mother (who was in the co-op until it morphed into a lesbian feminist paper) about the firing of Leona Durham, the editor of The Daily Iowan (the college paper) and three staff members after the Kent State riots.  Durham believed 50% of her staff should be women, complained about sexist ads, and after the riotings about the shootings at Kent State, was suspended because, they told her, “in times of crisis” they needed experienced staff.  She and the others were reinstated after an investigation.

Soon AIAW stopped printing even first name bylines for most of the articles.  Again, from the little I knew about this paper, this was partly from paranoia about the FBI and other organizations. Nonetheless, I can identify one or two of the writers by the contents of their essays.  Amazing, isn’t it?  Growing up in a small university town, knowing even one person in the collective led to acquaintanceship with one or two others?

Even the poetry illustrates the mood of confusion and depression.   In Vol. 3. No. 5, ( 7/20/73), there is a long, moving poem about sex and class:  Here is an excerpt (and the last five lines of the diaglouge should be indented, but I couldn’t format it correctly).

I tell her I want to be a carpenter
or a printer or mechanic-
and all she can say is
You’re not built to do that kind of work.
You think you’re a goddamn athlete?
You want a man’s job, that’s sick
When you’ve got some talent and creativity
You’ve got no business digging dirt!

Great poem!  Sorry I can’t print it all.  There again I was laboring with my pencil and hope I got my excerpts right.

The title Ain’t I a Woman? came from a speech in 1851 by Sojourner Truth, an African-American abolitionist and women’s rights activist.

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman?

I hope to write a couple of more short pieces about my reading of AIAW.

And if you know any former members of the collective who would be willing to be interviewed for my project, tell them to contact me at mirabiledictu.org@gmail.com