“All I Asking for Is My Body”: The Common Politics of Reproductive and Worker Rights

flickr

Some years ago I was teaching Milton Murayama’s wiry and wonderful 1975 novel All I Asking Is My Body in a working-class literature course I had designed for the university where I teach. When we started reading the novel together as a class, I recall a student expressing her surprise at the content of the novel. Based on the novel’s title, she explained, she had expected a feminist novel centering, in some way, a woman’s quest for autonomy, especially sexual and bodily autonomy, in a male-dominated, gender-stratified, and sexually-repressive society.

Of course, her expectation and insight made perfect sense, and I felt a little silly that I hadn’t noticed or remarked for myself on what was obvious to her: “All I Asking for Is My Body” easily–and obviously–encapsulates a key demand informing a healthy portion of any feminist agenda.

I was immersed in thinking about the history and cultural tradition of representing working-class life and justice struggles in this class and hadn’t overtly focused on feminist identity and politics, even though any worthwhile discussion of class politics must incorporate gender analysis and sexual politics (just reflect on the fact that women still make only a fraction of what men make for the same work to understand how gender is a category by…