Books

Battling Bella: The Protest Politics of Bella Abzug

Before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, or Hillary Clinton, there was New York’s Bella Abzug. With a fiery rhetorical style forged in the 1960s antiwar movement, Abzug vigorously promoted gender parity, economic justice, and the need to “bring Congress back to the people.”

The 1970 congressional election season saw Bella Abzug, in her trademark broad-brimmed hats, campaigning on the slogan “This Woman’s Place Is in the House―the House of Representatives.” Having won her seat, she advanced the feminist agenda in ways big and small, from gaining full access for congresswomen to the House swimming pool to cofounding the National Women’s Political Caucus to putting the title “Ms.” into the political lexicon. Beyond women’s rights, “Sister Bella” promoted gay rights, privacy rights, and human rights, and pushed legislation relating to urban, environmental, and foreign affairs.

Her stint in Congress lasted just six years―it ended when she decided to seek the Democrats’ 1976 New York Senate nomination, a race she lost to Daniel Patrick Moynihan by less than 1 percent. Their primary contest, while gendered, was also an ideological struggle for the heart of the Democratic Party. Bella Abzug’s protest politics had helped for a time to shift the center of politics to the left, but her progressive positions also fueled a backlash from conservatives who thought change was going too far.

This deeply researched political biography highlights how, as 1960s radicalism moved protest into electoral politics, Abzug drew fire from establishment politicians across the political spectrum―but also inspired a generation of women.

Available in e-book and hardback. For information about Battling Bella at Leandra Zarnow’s author page at Harvard University Press.

Follow this link for book club questions and themes to consider while reading Battling Bella.

Suffrage at 100: Women in Politics since 1920, edited with Stacie Taranto.

“We want to celebrate the centennial, but also want to have a sober conversation about where women are today and how difficult it has been for women to make inroads,” Leandra says of Suffrage at 100 in an article in Publisher Weekly.

Suffrage at 100 contains over twenty original essays from distinguished senior scholars to emerging junior historians, and is geared to students, public audiences, and scholars interested in the vibrant, diverse, growing field of women’s political history. Moving from the frontlines of community organizing to the highest glass ceiling, the authors consider: labor and civil rights; education and environmentalism; enfranchisement and voter suppression; conservatism and liberalism; indigeneity and transnationalism; LGBTQ and personal politics; Pan-Asian, Chicana, and black feminisms; commemoration and public history; and a final section that is among the first to historicize women’s political engagement in the twenty-first century. Bringing this history up to the Women’s March and #MeToo moment, the collection assesses how far women have come—the diversity of women in Congress and running for president in 2020 would have been unimaginable in 1920—as well as the ongoing challenges of navigating a patriarchal political system rife with institutional barriers and a culture centered on a white masculine model of leadership. 

Suffrage at 100 will be released by Johns Hopkins University Press in August 4th 2020.

Leandra and Stacie have discussed their collection on Laura Boersma’s “She’s History” podcast and the “New Books in Political Science” podcast.