Jessa Crispin

When Jessa Crispin was thirty, she burned her settled Chicago life to the ground and took off for Berlin with a pair of suitcases and no plan beyond leaving. Half a decade later, she’s still on the road, in search not so much of a home as of understanding, a way of being in the world that demands neither constant struggle nor complete surrender.           The Dead Ladies Project is an account of that journey—but it’s also much, much more. Fascinated by exile, Crispin travels an itinerary of key locations in its literary map, of places that have drawn writers who needed to break free from their origins and start afresh. As she reflects on William James struggling through despair in Berlin, Nora Barnacle dependant on and dependable for James Joyce in Trieste, Maud Gonne fomenting revolution and fostering myth in Dublin, or Igor Stravinsky starting over from nothing in Switzerland, Crispin interweaves biography, incisive literary analysis, and personal experience into a rich meditation on the complicated interactions of place, personality, and society that can make escape and reinvention such an attractive, even intoxicating proposition.           Personal and profane, funny and fervent, The Dead Ladies Project ranges from the nineteenth century to the present, from historical figures to brand-new hangovers, in search, ultimately, of an answer to a bedrock question: How does a person decide how to live their life?

A hip, accessible, and practical guide for artists and creative people looking to tarot for guidance and inspiration in the tradition of The Secret Language of Birthdays and Steal Like an Artist . What if the path to creativity was not as challenging as everyone thinks? What if you could find that spark, plot twist, or next project by simply looking at your life and your art through a different lens? Written for novices and seasoned readers alike, The Creative Tarot is a unique guidebook that reimagines tarot cards and the ways they can boost the creative process. Jessa Crispin guides you through the intuitive world of the tarot to get those creative juices flowing again. Thought to be esoteric and mystical, tarot cards are approachable and endlessly helpful to overcoming creative blocks. Crispin offers spiritual readings of the cards, practical information for the uninspired artist, and a wealth of fascinating anecdotes about famous artists including Virginia Woolf, Rembrandt, and David Bowie, and how they found inspiration. With five original tarot spreads and beautiful illustrations throughout, The Creative Tarot is an accessible, colorful guide that demystifies both the tarot and the creative process.

When Jessa Crispin was thirty, she burned her settled Chicago life to the ground and took off for Berlin with a pair of suitcases and no plan beyond leaving. Half a decade later, she’s still on the road, in search not so much of a home as of understanding, a way of being in the world that demands neither constant struggle nor complete surrender.          The Dead Ladies Project is an account of that journey—but it’s also much, much more. Fascinated by exile, Crispin travels an itinerary of key locations in its literary map, of places that have drawn writers who needed to break free from their origins and start afresh. As she reflects on William James struggling through despair in Berlin, Nora Barnacle dependant on and dependable for James Joyce in Trieste, Maud Gonne fomenting revolution and fostering myth in Dublin, or Igor Stravinsky starting over from nothing in Switzerland, Crispin interweaves biography, incisive literary analysis, and personal experience into a rich meditation on the complicated interactions of place, personality, and society that can make escape and reinvention such an attractive, even intoxicating proposition.         Personal and profane, funny and fervent, The Dead Ladies Project ranges from the nineteenth century to the present, from historical figures to brand-new hangovers, in search, ultimately, of an answer to a bedrock How does a person decide how to live their life?

Are you a feminist? Do you believe women are human beings and that they deserve to be treated as such? That women deserve all the same rights and liberties bestowed upon men? If so, then you are a feminist . . . or so the feminists keep insisting. But somewhere along the way, the movement for female liberation sacrificed meaning for acceptance, and left us with a banal, polite, ineffectual pose that barely challenges the status quo. In this bracing, fiercely intelligent manifesto, Jessa Crispin demands more. Why I Am Not A Feminist is a radical, fearless call for revolution. It accuses the feminist movement of obliviousness, irrelevance, and cowardice—and demands nothing less than the total dismantling of a system of oppression.

Negli ultimi anni assistiamo sempre più di frequente al fenomeno di attrici, cantanti e celebrità che proclamano la loro adesione al femminismo; contemporaneamente, sui social network e sui mass media sono sempre più all’ordine del giorno gli scandali legati alle molestie e le campagne contro i comportamenti sessisti. Ma qual è esattamente la natura di questo «femminismo» che tanto spesso viene chiamato in causa? Davvero basta condannare gli abusi sessuali e credere nel semplice principio che le donne hanno gli stessi diritti degli uomini, per potersi dichiarare femministe? Questo pamphlet agguerrito e provocatorio ci mostra come il femminismo moderno, nel suo sforzo di essere il più inclusivo e universale possibile, abbia perso la sua carica rivoluzionaria, la capacità di legare la lotta per l’emancipazione femminile a una più ampia battaglia per il rovesciamento dello status quo, e come dietro il cosiddetto girl power si celi in realtà l’accettazione degli stessi valori del sistema patriarcale che crea l’ingiustizia e le disuguaglianze: il denaro, il potere, la sopraffazione del più debole in nome della realizzazione di sé. Recuperando le teorie del femminismo del Novecento, Perché non sono femminista tenta invece di immaginare nuovi valori e nuove pratiche per costruire un progetto completamente diverso, insieme collettivo e radicale: «una rivoluzione totale in cui alle donne non sia semplicemente permesso di partecipare al mondo come già è, ma in cui siano parte attiva nel riformarlo».