Andrea Dworkin

June 1, 2020
Bancroft Prize winner Duberman (Luminous Traitor) delivers an exhaustive, intimate, and admiring biography of feminist writer and activist Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005). He details Dworkin’s upbringing by socially conscious Jewish immigrants in New Jersey, horrific mistreatment by male prison doctors after being arrested for protesting the Vietnam War, and abusive marriage to a Dutch anarchist before tracking her “meteoric” rise in the feminist movement beginning with the publication of Woman Hating in 1974. Duberman highlights Dworkin’s reputation as a passionate—and sometimes shocking—orator, and documents her struggles to gain acceptance from her peers and mainstream publishers. He also notes her concerns over race and class divisions within the feminist movement, ties her presentation of gender as a social construct to an early understanding of trans issues, and categorizes her antipornography crusade as a pushback against the power of systemic patriarchy. Duberman defends against claims that Dworkin considered all intercourse rape, and discusses her relationships with men and women without shoehorning her into a queer identity. Selections from Dworkin’s letters and autobiographical writings bring her own self-assessment into the picture, helping Duberman to push back against detractors who saw her as a one-note antisexuality crusader. Through this empathetic and approachable portrait, readers will develop a new appreciation for Dworkin’s “combative radicalism” and the lifelong, unsteady truce she made with the feminist mainstream.

Starred review from September 1, 2020
Arrested at an antiwar protest in New York City in 1965, college freshman Dworkin was sexually tortured in jail by two doctors, an outrage she publicly decried, earning both support and notoriety, thus setting the template for her ardent and controversial life and work. As deeply analytical as she was radical, Dworkin proved to be a writer of unshakable integrity and courage and a tireless, often cruelly maligned advocate for women's equality. After a disastrous marriage in Amsterdam to a sadistic abuser, Dworkin channeled her trauma into the first of her provocative books, and never stopped challenging assumptions about gender and sexism, most infamously in her prolonged and complicated battle against violently misogynistic pornography. Accomplished biographer, historian, and gay-rights activist Duberman, who had first access to the archives of, and some acquaintance with, his subject, masterfully navigates the swift current of Dworkin's ahead-of-her-time insights, audacious work, endless skirmishes, anguish, and impact before and after her premature death in 2005. This compelling portrait comprises an essential chapter in the history of feminism and human rights.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)