The Superwoman and Other Writings by Miriam Michelson

Description

The Superwoman and Other Writings by Miriam Michelson is the first collection of newspaper articles and fiction written by Miriam Michelson (1870-1942), best-selling novelist, revolutionary journalist, and early feminist activist. Editor Lori Harrison-Kahan introduces readers to a writer who broke gender barriers in journalism, covering crime and politics for San Francisco's top dailies throughout the 1890s, an era that consigned most female reporters to writing about fashion and society events. In the book's foreword, Joan Michelson-Miriam Michelson's great-great niece, herself a reporter and advocate for women's equality and advancement-explains that in these trying political times, we need the reminder of how a girl reporter leveraged her fame and notoriety to keep the suffrage movement on the front page of the news. In her introduction, Harrison-Kahan draws on a variety of archival sources to tell the remarkable story of a brazen, single woman who grew up as the daughter of Jewish immigrants in a Nevada mining town during the Gold Rush. The Superwoman and Other Writings by Miriam Michelson offers a cross-section of Michelson's eclectic career as a reporter by showcasing a variety of topics she covered, including the treatment of Native Americans, profiles of suffrage leaders such as Susan B. Anthony and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and police corruption. The book also traces Michelson's evolution from reporter to fiction writer, reprinting stories such as In the Bishop's Carriage (1904), a scandalous picaresque about a female pickpocket; excerpts from the Saturday Evening Post series, A Yellow Journalist (1905), based on Michelson's own experiences as a reporter in the era of Hearst and Pulitzer; and the title novella, The Superwoman, a trailblazing work of feminist utopian fiction that has been unavailable since its publication in The Smart Set in 1912. Readers will see how Michelson's newspaper work fueled her imagination as a fiction writer and how she adapted narrative techniques from fiction to create a body of journalism that informs, provokes, and entertains, even a century after it was written. Cover Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments Foreword A Note on the Text Introduction 1. The Superwoman (1912) 2. Newspaper Journalism, 1895 to 1902 Introduction to Part 2 The New Woman Realized Viewed by a Woman Weeds and Flowers The Real Susan B. Anthony The Real New Woman Strangling Hands upon a Nation’s Throat Dark-Skinned Lion-Tamer in the House of Mystery (excerpt) Changing a Bad Indian into a Good One Charlotte Perkins Stetson Flays Her Own Sex Alive (excerpt) Where Waves the Dragon Flag Does Matrimony Disqualify Working Women? (excerpt) Nevada’s Feminine David and Jonathan: A Sketch from Life A Military Matter in Black and White Mrs. Stetson Is in Town Stetson Wedding Miriam Michelson Goes on a Hatchet Crusade Mrs. Nation, Joan of Arc of Temperance Crusade, as Seen by Miriam Michelson (excerpt) Two Little Slave Girls Owned in Philadelphia A Character Study of Emma Goldman Motives of Women Who Commit Theft 3. Short Fiction, 1901 to 1905 Introduction to Part 3 An Understudy for a Princess Ah Luey’s Self In the Bishop’s Carriage The Ancestry of Irene (Stories of the Nevada Madigans: II) The Pencil Will In Chy Fong’s Restaurant The Milpitas Maiden Bibliography of Works by Miriam Michelson Index