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Common Knowledge

Legal name: Walker, Barbara Goodwin
Birthdate: 1930-07-02
Gender: female
Nationality: USA
Birthplace: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Places of residence: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Sarasota, Florida, USA
Venice, Florida, USA
Education: University of Pennsylvania
Occupations: knitting expert
writer
knitter
feminist
Organizations: Washington Star
Morris Museum Mineralogical Society
Trailside Mineral Club of the New Jersey Earth Science Association
Awards and honors: Humanist Heroine Award of the American Humanist Association's Feminist Caucus (1993)
"Women Making Herstory Award" of the New Jersey National Organization for Women (1995)
Short biography: 1) http://www.nownj.org/njNews/2005/0116... humanist_profile- Barbara G. Walker.htm

2) Barbara Walker's knitting legacy. IN: Falick, Melanie. Knitting in America. New York: 1997. pp 56-7. ISBN: 1-885183-27-5

3) Short profile and photo http://www.ffrf.org/day/?sel=1&da...
Disambiguation notice: also known as Barbara Walker. Knitting, New Age, Feminism, and a novel, the same person does it all.

Members

Reviews

A treasury of knitting patterns by Barbara G. Walker

Original 1968 version

Flagged

PhillyHandweavers | 8 other reviews | Nov 28, 2023 |

Feminist Fairy Tales by Barbara G. Walker

I enjoy fairy tales and I am a feminist but after four of these stories I'd had enough of this book. Retelling traditional tales well takes subtlety and skill, both of which Walker's writing lacks. Lavine gets it right with "Fairest" and "Ella Enchanted."

Flagged

rebwaring | 3 other reviews | Aug 14, 2023 |

Feminist Fairytales by Barbara G. Walker

Thoroughly enjoyed these stories and the socially conscious twist. Imagine how life would have been if we grew up with these instead of the usual tales which don't do much for girls/women.

Flagged

AAPremlall | 3 other reviews | Jul 23, 2023 |

The woman's encyclopedia of myths and secrets by Barbara G. Walker

This is a work of fiction presented as if it were non-fiction, complete with footnotes to real works that don't support the author's points. I don't know what parts of this work are actually true, but once I found the dishonest footnotes, I didn't care.

I understand the desire to have lots of history favorable to one's group, and to imagine a better past when one doesn't like current conditions. Any number of authors of honest fiction do an excellent job of imagining such pasts. I can even kind of understand selecting the least likely explanation for some fact, if that's the one that feels most congenial, and writing it up with "could be ..." and "some researchers suggest ...".

But none of that excuses dishonest footnotes.

You can't learn anything from this work, even if parts of it are in fact true, because you'll never know which parts were basically made up. Checking for reliable-seeming sources won't help; you need to actually read the author's supposed sources.… (more)