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Dorothy Day (Women’s Issues (Ready Reference series))

Author Profile

Dorothy Day joined the radical union the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and became a reporter for the socialist papers Call and The Masses. Jailed in 1917 for picketing the White House on behalf of woman suffrage, she was arrested again in 1973 while demonstrating in favor of César Chávez’s United Farm Workers. She founded a paper called the Catholic Worker and set up “houses of hospitality” for the poor and unemployed. Her own accounts of her social activism can be found in House of Hospitality (1938), On Pilgrimage: The Sixties (1972), and her autobiography The Long Loneliness (1952).

Bibliography

Coles, Robert. Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1987. An accessible introduction to Day’s life and work that draws on the author’s long friendship with Day and includes many excerpts from letters and conversations.

Merriman, Brigid O’Shea. Searching for Christ: The Spirituality of Dorothy Day. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1994. From the series Notre Dame Studies in American Catholicism. Includes bibliographical references and an index.

Miller, William D. Dorothy Day: A Biography. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982. A detailed biography that supplements his 1973 book (below).

Miller, William D. A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement. New York: Liveright, 1973. Treats Day’s life in the context of the Catholic Worker movement.

Nies, Judith. Nine Women: Portraits from the American Radical Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Places Day in the context of American radicalism along with Sarah Grimké, Mother Jones, and others; it includes an extensive bibliography following the chapter on Day.

O’Connor, June. The Moral Vision of Dorothy Day: A Feminist Perspective. New York: Crossroad, 1991. Includes bibliographical references and an index.

Roberts, Nancy. “Building a New Earth: Dorothy Day and The Catholic Worker.” The Christian Century 97 (1980). A philosophical look at Day’s life and work, written only days before her death.

Thorn, William J., Phillip M. Runkel, and Susan Mountin, eds. Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement: Centenary Essays. Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 2001. From the series Marquette Studies in Theology. Includes bibliographical references and an index.

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