This Land Is Herland: Gendered Activism in Oklahoma from the 1870s to the 2010s ed. by Sarah Eppler Janda and Patricia Loughlin

Abstract

Reviewed by: This Land Is Herland: Gendered Activism in Oklahoma from the 1870s to the 2010sed. by Sarah Eppler Janda and Patricia Loughlin Courtney Kisat This Land Is Herland: Gendered Activism in Oklahoma from the 1870s to the 2010s. Edited by Sarah Eppler Janda and Patricia Loughlin. Women and the American West. ( Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021. Pp. xiv, 303. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 978-0-8061-6926-2.) Scholars of gender, rural, and western American history will find much to celebrate in This Land Is Herland: Gendered Activism in Oklahoma from the 1870s to the 2010s. The first installment of the Women and the American West series, which is edited by Renée M. Laegreid and published by the University of Oklahoma Press, the volume presents thirteen essays that profile Oklahoma women over time and space. Central to these essays are the notions of belonging and agency: to whom do the rights of a citizen belong, how have they been claimed and refuted, and how does this reshape our understanding of the American West? This scholarship is merely the latest effort at correcting the historiography of the American West, a movement that began in 1982 when the Coalition [End Page 600]for Western Women's History formed to highlight the lack of historical attention on western women's lived experiences and to refute the mainstream, overmasculinized version of the American West. Since then, historians looking to see the past through a more gendered lens have produced valuable scholarship shaped by more inventive ways of imagining the spaces in which women have worked, lived, and died. This Land Is Herlandcontributes much to this vibrant field of western women's history. The anthology's editors, Sarah Eppler Janda and Patricia Loughlin, both of whom are noted historians of gender and the American West, have woven a historical tapestry that artfully represents the activism of Oklahoma women from a variety of socioeconomic and demographic backgrounds between the 1870s and the 2010s. The anthology is organized into three parts and represents the work of a dozen professional historians, adding much to a field that is finally receiving well-deserved attention in mainstream history. Part 1 examines themes of activism, radicalism, and maternalism through the lives of five remarkable women who worked within the bounds of gender norms to help shape their fledgling communities in the postbellum era through statehood in 1907. Part 2 delves into the long civil rights movement in Oklahoma, offering profiles of four courageous women from the 1920s through the 1960s, women who remained determined to improve society even as opposition mounted and consequences loomed large. Part 3 concludes the anthology with four essays covering women who fought for their vision of equality from the 1970s through the 2010s. As the culture wars of the times increased in intensity, the authors explain, so too did each woman's determination to win the day, even in the face of devastating consequences to their liberty and property. By way of critique, the subjectivity of some authors raises questions about potentially overcorrecting the historical record, while other points are weakened by unsubstantiated claims. For example, one author explains that an illustration is "possibly" that of her subject, but as "there are no confirmed" photographs of her, the reader is asked to instead imagine the woman in the photo as representative of the women who occupied that space and time (p. 136). If a specific figure becomes impossible to document through traditional research, where does the historian's due diligence lie, and where does it factor into an imagining of the spaces occupied by people such as those under study in this volume? These questions will continue to provoke scholars who produce scholarship on women's experiences across time and place. The women profiled in This Land Is Herlandremained fluid in tactics, rhetoric, and activism by necessity, because they operated in a world dominated by men. Each utilized the tools of maternalism, social capital, and political persuasion to advance their particular view of a society in Oklahoma. Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote Herlandin 1915, describing a society as a feminist utopia completely free from male presence. As the historians in...