An+Interview+with+Jennifer+Gilley

By Delia Tash
 * The Importance of Feminist Publishing to Libraries: **
 * An Interview with Jennifer Gilley **

Recently, I had the privilege of meeting Jennifer Gilley, Library Director at Penn State New Kensington and winner of the 2017 ACRL WGSS Career Achievement Award. We met at her lecture on Feminist Publishing at Penn State Abington Library. Upon meeting her she kindly agreed to answer some of my questions regarding feminist publishing. My questions and Gilley’s answers are as follows:


 * Congratulations on winning the 2017 ACRL WGSS Career Achievement Award! Can you speak a bit about what this honor means to you personally and professionally?[[image:JenniferGilleyHeadshot (1).jpg width="327" height="301" align="right" caption="Jennifer Gilley"]] **

//This award is such a tremendous honor because it is coming from a group of women whom I greatly admire and respect. The Women and Gender Studies Section has meant a lot to me over the years both professionally and personally and I have had many mentors and friends there who have supported me the whole way. The previous winners of this award are all my personal sheroes, so it is indeed thrilling to be among their number. //


 * What sparked an interest in feminist publishing for you as a topic of research? **

//I read Simone Murray’s book Mixed Media: Feminist Presses and Publishing Politics, and had an epiphany. In her introduction, she demonstrates that no one has comprehensively studied the history of feminist presses or the women in print movement and argues that this type of study is crucial for understanding the development of feminism and women’s studies. I realized that studying feminist publishing was not only of great interest to me, but made perfect sense for me because I am a librarian. Combining book history and feminist history? Yes, please! //


 * Given that library science is a female dominated field do you think that influences collection development related to feminist published works? **

//I do think that libraries in general do a decent job of collecting feminist works, but I would say that’s because there are a lot of feminist librarians, not just female ones. The feminist works they collect, though, do tend to be the ones published by mainstream and academic presses. Books published by tiny feminist presses such as aunt lute, and non-mainstream periodicals such as make/shift tend to be much more rare in libraries. //


 * Can you speak a bit about the quandary of cataloging feminist literature? **

//The interdisciplinary, political, and constantly changing nature of feminist literature has always made it a problem to easily categorize. It is both extremely irritating and really convenient for me that nonfiction books about women have traditionally been dumped into HQ Social problems—women, because although it is ridiculous to look at women as a social problem, it also means all the feminist books are in the same spot. Easy browsing! Finding feminist materials in a catalog is challenging because of the question of who decides what’s feminist. Feminist works often defy categorization. Take for example, Phoebe Robinson’s new book You Can’t Touch My Hair and Other Things I Still Have to Explain. This is a new classic of black feminism, but it won’t come up by searching black feminism. The subject heading is African-American women comedians—Biography. Thank heaven for keyword searching and the potential future of user tagging. //


 * How do you think the emergence of transfeminism has played into the 3rd wave of feminism? **

//I think that transfeminism was/is a really key part of third wave feminism and has largely eradicated the issue of strict gender binaries and transphobia among the current generation of young feminists. //


 * Do you foresee a 4th wave of feminists and if so what do you think that would that look like? **

//I don’t think anyone is going to proclaim a 4th wave because of the widespread criticism among women of color of the wave metaphor that encourages historical discontinuity, instead of seeing ourselves as on a continuum with previous generations of activists. I desperately hope that the future of feminism is to include issues of transgender, transnational, anti-racist, queer, and environmental feminism all simultaneously under the umbrella of feminism. This means once and for all redefining the white liberal feminism that currently hogs the name. //


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">What do you think of the “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” merchandise controversy? **

//<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">I actually hadn’t heard of this controversy, but I would say that any time a feminist group wants to create feminist merchandise, part of the process must include carefully considering the source and manufacture of the goods. Otherwise you are exploiting global labor to prop up white feminism, which unfortunately, sometimes is what feminism looks like. But it shouldn’t be. //


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">If you had to name one book that embodies feminist literature what would it be and why? **

//<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">I would pick This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga. The publishing history of this book encompasses 3 feminist presses, the most famous of which being the incomparable Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. Politically, despite being published by tiny presses, it was massively influential, ushering intersectionality into second wave feminism. It was also a multigenre anthology, with poetry, art, and prose, all written by women of color from various backgrounds. //


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">What would you consider as the most prominent feminist publisher of all time? **

//<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">If you’re looking for the longest-running feminist presses with the biggest catalog and most stable finances, I would say Feminist Press and Seal Press, both of which were there at the beginning of the second wave and are still in business, publishing cutting edge works. However, I might argue that the most ideologically influential feminist press was Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. This is a famous press despite its very tiny catalog, mostly due to the indomitable force of Barbara Smith, its publisher. With just a few works, Kitchen Table really swayed the future of feminism into intersectionality and activist analysis. //


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">In your book chapter “Feminist Publishing/Publishing Feminism: Experimentation in the Second-Wave Book Publishing” for “This Book is an Action: Feminist Print Culture and Activist Aesthetics” you quote June Arnold, known in the women’s liberation movement as imparting in 1976 that mainstream publishers “will publish some of us - the least threatening, the most saleable, the most easily controlled or a few who cannot be ignored.” **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Can it be argued that these same qualities: salability, non-threatening appeal, and easily controlled material are consistent with the content of the male authors being published at that time? **

//<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Well, I have not studied what male authors were being published at that time, but I would say that in general this principle is probably true overall, but of course the concept of what is threatening would refer to what is threatening to the power structure. The writings of white men are probably unlikely to be threatening to the power structure, unless they are Marxist. So I think the larger point is to think about who is threatening to the power structure (not just women) and whether or not they are being published. Interestingly, salability is the primary principle, however, so some works that are threatening to the power structure are indeed published by mainstream presses as long as they promise to sell well. See Sisterhood is Powerful (1971), edited by Robin Morgan and published by Random House during a cultural moment in which radical feminism was seen as “trendy.” //

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Gilley’s in-depth knowledge of the major players in feminist publishing exemplifies authenticity both as a feminist and a scholar. As an aside I found her answer to the question regarding the “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” merchandise hypocrisy especially enlightening. This is because being a true feminist that she is, she was not even aware of this superficial trend in which people were buying and wearing t-shirts made in sweat shops basically advertising (or providing false advertising, depending on your stance) that they are feminist. Gilley is proof of feminism being alive and well whatever label is given to the current movement and her hopes of inclusion of “//transgender, transnational, anti-racist, queer, and environmental feminism all simultaneously under the umbrella of feminism”// rings true. To conclude, I found Gilley’s adept knowledge in the field of Feminist Publishing informative and apparent in her answers as well as during her lecture and question and answer period after the lecture at Penn State Abington Library.

//<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Delia Tash is the Evening Supervisor at Penn State Abington Library. //// She received her M.S.L.S. from Drexel University and B.A. from Temple University where she studied Fine Arts and Art History. She can be reached by email at dmt25@psu.edu. //