Fugitive Information: Essays from a Feminist Hothead

The title of this invigorating and strikingly original collection takes the term for runaway computer data as a metaphor for feminism, which is ``at its best on the run,'' being constantly reimagined and redefined. The volume includes responses from readers to the pieces, which were originally published in a newsletter of the same name. Hagan ( Prayers to the Moon ) offers strong ideas that go past theory to real life, and she often provides concrete steps for readers to take (such as a ``Hothead To Do List''). Musings on turn-of-the-century feminist/anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre excite both with a portrait of a lost feminist hero and with Hagan's re-examination of her feeling that so-called women's history was ``boring.'' A treatise on heterosexual feminism compares the possible, if energy-sapping endeavor of feminists loving men to growing orchids in the Arctic. A look at female intimacy takes her mother's bridge club--which has met for nearly 50 years--as its starting point yet manages to avoid sentimentality, and the process of answering a survey on ``women's experiences of male violence'' spurs further research on whether women choose to bear arms and why. (July)