Red Light: Superheroes, Saints, and Sluts Book

The female as represented in history and popular culture has been a timeless yet culturally unstable image, construed and contested by men and women alike. Red Light is an anthology of essays and visual materials that identifies and deconstructs female icons, past and present, and re-imagines them for the twenty-first century.

For Anna, the red light is a beacon, a warning signal that declares the incendiary power of women; the icons found in this book are red lights as well: Wonder Woman, Amelia Earhart, the Virgin Mary, Jayne Mansfield, Florence Nightingale, Aileen Wuornos, Belle Starr, Foxy Brown, the Avon Lady, and many more. Further, the categories these icons fall into—superheroes, saints, and sluts—are reconfigured and redeemed by their portrayers.

Alternately fiery, sexy, angry, and eloquent, the works in this book cast these powerful, conflicted women in the (red) light of a new day.

Contributors include: Sandra Alland, Sharon Bridgforth, Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, Daphne Gottlieb, Collin Kelley, Billie Mandel, Lenelle Moise, Sara Seinberg, and Zoe Whittall.

Anna Camilleri is a Toronto-based writer and performer. She co-edited the anthology Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity, a Lambda Award nominee, as well as co-authored Boys Like Her as a member of the Taste This collective. In 2004, she published her memoir, I Am a Red Dress.