Grand Coolie Dam, The, pamphlet.
Piercy, Marge. The Grand Coolie Dam. Boston: New England Free Press, [ND, but ca. 1969].
Pamphlet: 5-1/2 x 8-1/2,” 14pp; printed self-wrappers (stapled); line drawings accompany the text; paper browned; front cover printed in fuschia.
First edition. “The Grand Coolie Dam” originally appeared in the November, 1969 issue of Leviathan. The pamphlet records that “Marge Piercy was active in SDS and NACLA, is a founder of MDS (Movement for a Democratic Society) and is currently involved in Women’s Liberation.” Piercy asks if the women’s liberation movement is about liberation, “how come the condition of women inside it is no better than outside?” Piercy sees this in part because “[o]nly a woman willing and able to act like a stereotyped American frontier male can make herself heard.” She points out that,
We are told our sense of oppression is not legitimate. We are told women’s liberation is a secondary issue, to be dealt with after the war is won. But the basis of women’s oppression is economic in a sense that far predates capitalism and the market economy and that is rooted into the whole fabric of socialization. Ou[r] claims are the most radical, for they entail restructuring even the nuclear family.... What we want we will have to invent ourselves.
The piece later appeared in an anthology edited by Robin Morgan entitled The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. “The Grand Coolie Dam” in this printing, however, with its inked-in page numbers and line drawings, communicates the fervor and passion of the women’s liberation movement. OCLC records only four locations.
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