Wild Hats, Cheeky Songs, and Witty Actions for a Better World

Carole Roy

"Just as the story had to be told,
it must now be shared."
--Deborah Barndt

nominated for the Amelia Bloomer Project
sponsored by the Feminist Task Force of the American Library Association

Women's daring is ancient. Women fought against slavery and offered shelter to hunted runaways, demanded economic justice for the starving or working poor, raised their voices when rights were trampled, raised their fists when their children were murdered. Women's collective acts of resistance have played, and continue to play, a vital but often unacknowledged role in humanizing social, political, and economic policies. To death, danger, and oppression women have frequently responded in life-affirming ways, contributions concealed in invisibility and silence for too long, without stories of resistance and opposition. But no more.

This is the tale of the Raging Grannies. Their beginning and growth, the invention of their identity, the educational and bold potential of their activism, the values expressed in their actions and songs, and their impact on issues, stereotypes, media, and people.

At a time when environmental destruction and war threatened, when the growing chasm between poor and rich endangered justice, a group of women stood up with courageous irreverence to denounce government lies, corporate greed and short-sightedness, and in the process, created a new cultural figure that challenged authority as well as stereotypes of women.

The Grannies' distinctive approach is surprisingly popular and effective: in sixteen years, more than fifty groups of Raging Grannies exist across Canada, in the United States, and as far away as the UK, Australia and Greece (Greek Grannies call themselves Furies). Their popularity reveals the power of creativity and humour, which allow them to claim their space on the political scene, refusing to be dismissed or ignored.

The Raging Grannies both records and celebrates this vibrant activism.

"At last, a book on one of the country's most vital and original political movements! Carole Roy's timely text on the country's Raging Grannies will interest sociologists, political scientists, activists and the general reader."
--Dr. Lorna Drew, Fredericton Raging Grannies

"Unique in form and content…born out of a commitment to document activism, deepening our understanding of this particular form of action, and inspiring others to learn from the imaginative strategies of these courageous older women…[The Raging Grannies] fills a gap in feminist literature. Roy contributes significantly to our thinking about creative resistance, and her examination of strategies of satire and humour, in particular, is ground-breaking."
--Deborah Barndt, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, and co-editor of Just Doing It: Popular Collective Action in the Americas

"Carole Roy's sensitive and insightful writing on the Raging Grannies will help the reader to see and understand who we are, where we come from and what we are trying to do. It has helped me to better see and understand these things as well." --Joan McFarland, Fredericton Raging Granny

Table of Contents

CAROLE ROY is a long-time activist who has worked as Program Co-ordinator with Canada World Youth International Educational Exchanges. She holds an MA in Women's Studies, from York University, and a Ph.D. in Adult Education, from University of Toronto, Canada.

240 pages, 8x10, bibliography, index, 80 photographs, protest songs, Granny profiles
Paperback ISBN: 1-55164-240-9 $24.99
Hardcover ISBN: 1-55164-241-7 $53.99

Anyone interested in joining, or starting a group,
can find information at the Raging Grannies International website:
www.geocities.com/raginggrannies

Cultural Studies / Women's Studies

April 2004

[Return to Catalogue] [Ordering Info] [Home]