Feminism on and off the page

This piece is inspired, informed, and indebted to several of Laurel Richardson's essays, including, "Resisting Resistance Narratives: A Representation for Communication," "Afterwords: Replay," "Afterwords: 'Louisa May' and Me," "Speakers Whose Voices Matter," "Writing Matters," "Postmodern Social Theory: Representational Practices," "Poetics, Dramatics, and Transgressive Validity: 'The Case of the Skipped Line,' " "Educational Birds," "The Collective Story: Presidential Address, North Central Sociological Association," and "Afterwords: Sacred Spaces," all from Fields of Play (1997) and "My Left Hand: Socialization and the Interrupted Life" (2000), "Meta-Jeopardy" (1998a) and "Politics of Location: Where Am I Now?" (1998b), all published in Qualitative Inquiry. This text is a response to Richardson's (1997) invitation to experiment with form in order to create a "new communal understanding of what constitutes sociological 'knowledge,' " an understanding that shows, performs (p. 80). My words are an offering, a small portrait of how Richardson's feminism, both on and off the page, has shaped my understanding of our world and the place of a woman writing in it, of it.