Remembering Florence Howe
Dear friends of the Feminist Press,
On September 12, 2020, our beloved founder Florence Howe passed away. Today, one year later, we invite you to take a moment to honor her life and celebrate her legacy with us.
Florence Howe was born in Brooklyn in 1929. Throughout her life, she wore many hats: she was an educator at Goucher College; a freedom school teacher in Mississippi; an international women’s rights activist; a president of the Modern Language Association; and a writer who authored and/or edited more than a dozen books and over one hundred essays. Wherever she went, Florence remained dedicated to her feminist values, fiercely determined to create a world in which women’s work and writing received the recognition, readership, and community that it deserved.
In 1970, at the age of forty, Florence founded the Feminist Press out of a conviction that a long history of women’s writing had been virtually erased by the male-dominated publishing industry. Over the subsequent decades, under Florence’s leadership, the Feminist Press published now-classic texts by authors including Ama Ata Aidoo, Rebecca Harding Davis, Marilyn French, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Zora Neale Hurston, Paule Marshall, Louise Meriwether, Lauretta Ngcobo, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, Agnes Smedley, Alice Walker, and Zoë Wicomb.
Today, Florence’s legacy lives on in innumerable ways: in our vibrant community of feminist writers, readers, and thinkers, in the women’s studies departments that owe some of their earliest texts to Florence’s recovery work, and in every new author who first saw themselves in a Feminist Press book. Florence’s life and work inspired a new generation of feminists in publishing—like FP Board President Linda Villarosa, who shared that “like me, people across several generations can thank Florence for opening our eyes, uplifting our voices, mentoring us as writers and scholars, and training us to step into her shoes.”
In the introduction to her memoir A Life in Motion, Florence wrote that a dear friend “saw as inspiration for my life the motto of Hunter College: mihi cura futuri—the care of the future is mine.” As we remember Florence’s life, we also give thanks for the future that she made possible for us.
Do you have a story or memory you’d like to share about Florence? You can write to us at info@feministpress.org and let us know if you’re comfortable with our sharing your stories with our followers.
