Robin Morgan

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For the British newspaper editor, see Robin Morgan (journalist).
Robin Morgan
Born January 29, 1941(1941-01-29)
Lake Worth, Florida, United States
Residence New York City, New York, United States
Nationality American
Ethnicity Caucasian
Education Columbia University
Occupation Author
Home town Mount Vernon, New York
Known for Sisterhood is Powerful and Mama
Spouse(s) Kenneth Pitchford
Children Blake Morgan

Robin Morgan (born January 29, 1941) is a former child actor turned American radical feminist activist, writer, poet, and editor of Sisterhood is Powerful and Ms. Magazine.

During the 1960s, she participated in the civil rights and anti-war movements; in the late 1960s she was a founding member of radical feminist organizations such as New York Radical Women and W.I.T.C.H.. She also founded the Women's Media Center[1].

Contents

[edit] Child Star

Morgan was born in Lake Worth, Florida to Jewish parents [1] and grew up in Mount Vernon, New York. She began her career as a child star at the age of 2, when her mother and her Aunt Sally put her in child modeling. At the age of four she had her own radio program, Little Robin Morgan, and her most famous role came at the age of nine, when she began to play Dagmar Hansen, the younger sister in the 1950s TV series Mama which starred Peggy Wood.

When she left the series in 1956, Morgan was suffering from the pressures of unwanted fame, and resolved to become a poet rather than an actor. She fought her mother's efforts to make her continue acting, took classes at Columbia University (though she proudly never graduated), and then took jobs as a literary agent and freelance editor in New York City.

[edit] Activism and Writing

Morgan began publishing her poetry in the early 1960s (later collected in her 1972 anthology, Monster). In 1962, she married the poet Kenneth Pitchford. She soon became active in the anti-war Left, and contributed articles and poetry to Left-wing and counter-culture journals such as Liberation, Rat, Win, and The Guardian.

In the late 1960s, Morgan was a member of the Youth International Party with Abbie Hoffman and Paul Krassner. However, tensions over sexism within YIP (and the New Left in general) came to a head while Morgan was becoming more involved in Women's Liberation activism. In 1968, she joined demonstrations to free Valerie Solanas (protesting the three-year sentence Solanas received for attempted murder against Andy Warhol), and became a founding member of New York Radical Women, helping to organize their inaugural protest of the Miss America pageant in September 1968.

Later in the same year she helped to create W.I.T.C.H., a radical feminist group that used public street theater (called "hexes" or "zaps") to call attention to sexism. In December 1968, Morgan and other women staged a "hex" against both House Unamerican Activities Committee and the Chicago Eight; they argued that men in HUAC and the Chicago Eight played off of each other to portray the antiwar movement as the pet project of a few male "stars".

Like many radical feminists, Morgan made a decisive break from what they described as the "male Left," and put the reasons for her break into her 1970 essay for the first women's issue of Rat, "Goodbye to All That". In the same year, she edited one of the first anthologies of radical feminist writings, Sisterhood is Powerful.

Since the 1970s, Morgan has continued in her writing, editing, publishing, and feminist organizing. In addition to her poetry and frequent articles on feminist topics, she has edited two anthologies following up on Sisterhood is Powerful: Sisterhood is Global (1984) and Sisterhood is Forever (2003). She has served as a contributing editor to Ms. Magazine for many years, and served as editor-in-chief from 1989-1993.

Robin Morgan currently lives in Manhattan. Her son (with Kenneth Pitchford) is the musician and recording artist Blake Morgan.

[edit] Publications

  • The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism, Washington Square Press; (December 2001) ISBN 0-7434-5293-3
  • The Anatomy of Freedom
  • The Mer-Child: A New Legend for Children and Other Adults
  • "Upstairs in the Garden: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1988", W. W. Norton, 1991, ISBN 0-393-30760-3
  • A Hot January: Poems 1996-1999
  • Saturday's Child: A Memoir, W. W. Norton, 2000, ISBN 0-393-05015-7
  • Front Line Feminism, 1975-1995: Essays from Sojourner's First 20 Years
  • "Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist", Random House; 1978, ISBN 0-394-72612-X
  • Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement
  • Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology
  • Sisterhood is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium, Washington Square Press; (March 5, 2003), ISBN 0-7434-6627-6
  • The Burning Time, Melville House Publishing; (March 1, 2006), ISBN 193363300X
  • Fighting Words: A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right, Nation Books; (September 28, 2006), ISBN 1-56025-948-5

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.womensmediacenter.com/about_us.html

[edit] External links

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