Feminist Prose and Poetry Archive by Susan Griffin, 1973-74

Susan Griffin

Archive

[Feminism][Poetry] Three early feminist poetry and prose collections by feminist writer Susan Griffin. San Lorenzo and Oakland, CA: Shameless Hussy Press and Mama’s Press, 1971–1974. All first or early printings. Three staplebound booklets in illustrated wrappers. This archive gathers three texts by radical feminist writer and theorist Susan Griffin, each published by women-run presses central to the second-wave feminist print movement in the Bay Area. These works—Dear Sky, Let Them Be Said, and The Sink—offer a powerful, genre-blurring introduction to Griffin’s early literary activism. Known for bridging poetic experimentation and feminist critique, Griffin’s writing in these volumes explores the lived experiences of women—housework, motherhood, institutional oppression, and erotic autonomy—within a patriarchal world. Griffin’s later seminal book Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (1978) would draw deeply from the forms and themes established here
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[1] Griffin, Susan. Dear Sky. San Lorenzo: Shameless Hussy Press, 1971 (second printing, 1973). This chapbook includes the poem “Letter to the Outside,” in which Griffin reflects on the interiority of a woman’s life defined by domesticity, motherhood, and institutional containment—“here I am / back in as the / jailor, / a mother and a / teacher.” These pieces originally appeared in influential feminist and underground publications such as It Ain’t Me Babe and No More Masks.

[2] Griffin, Susan. Let Them Be Said. Oakland: Mama’s Press, 1973. First edition. A visually integrated volume combining feminist poetry and original graphics by Joanne Bourgault, Jeri Robertson, and Frida Kohler. The standout “Three Poems for Women” centers labor and erasure: “This is a poem for a woman doing dishes… / because the woman doing dishes / has trouble hearing.” Printed by and for a collective feminist audience, this is an incisive critique of the domestic sphere as both literal and symbolic silencing.

[3] Griffin, Susan. The Sink. San Lorenzo: Shameless Hussy Press, 1974. First printing. A collection of short stories, including the provocative “There Are Already Too Many Candlemakers in Peru,” which features a conversation between a young girl and an older man on public morality and sexual experience, confronting the social codes that silence female desire. Published by Judy Grahn’s Shameless Hussy Press, the book embodies the feminist small press ethos, bringing marginal voices to print with raw intensity.

These chapbooks are key primary documents of second-wave feminist poetics and printing. Each was issued by grassroots feminist presses that helped define the cultural and political voice of the 1970s women’s liberation movement. Booklets all exhibit light toning and discoloration tow wrappers. Overall very good condition. A vital archive for scholars and collectors of feminist literature and independent women’s publishing.

Item #22030

Price: $225.00