"We couldn't have known it then, but our work later became the foundation for many studies and raised a national, even global consciousness, resulting in dramatic and gratifying changes to gender-based educational practices in this country and others." -Eleanor Pam, feminist activist and long-time friend of Millett.
Millett's exhibit, "Trap," chronicled the 1965 torture and murder of an Indianapolis teenager, Sylvia Likens. The exhibit has been described as one that, "Extrapolat[ed] her terror, it poisoned major institutions, projected the same deadly imprisonment and penury that were Sylvia's final surroundings."
"By the end of 1971, women were virtually organizing in every town across the country, and women’s studies had exploded, consisting of 600 courses and programs nationwide—which would increase to some 4,500 courses programs nationwide during the 1972-73 academic year. Millett's activism and Sexual Politics forces driving proliferation of movement and academic feminism at a time when hostility surged through every sector of society." -Ellen Messer-Davidow, Chair of the Department of English at the University of Minnesota
This book is Millett's "intimate exploration of women who sell their bodies to men. Here, in their own words, are the true stories of women who live in another world where sex is strictly business, a world where anything goes (for a price) and nothing counts - a world most women have only heard of and very few could understand...until now." One reviewer states the book is, "A stark and revealing portrait told by the women who've lived it - a shattering female experience that should be read by all men who think they understand it and all women who'd prefer not to think about it."
With compete candor, Millett reveals a turmoil of memories, fears,and triumphs; her doubts about her own strength in fulfilling the role of visionary for the women’s movement, pressure from the movement when she reveals her bisexuality to the press, and, finally, a renewed determination to live and grow as an artist and writer. -Publisher's synopsis of the book
Sita follows the disintegration of Millett’s love affair with a woman who is ten years her senior, a veteran of several marriages, and the mother of grown children. Fiery, seductive, elegant, and exotic, Sita captivates Millett in every sense, offering unimagined pleasure and much-needed emotional security. One day however, all this changes. Arriving from New York to spend half the year in Berkeley, as they had arranged, Millett is appalled to find the house - their house - overrun with Sita’s troubled children and their hangers-on. Amid this unexpected chaos, she struggles with searing jealousy and self-doubt to salvage her relationship with Sita, who is often preoccupied, impatient, and cold, and who frequently disappears for assignations with male lovers. With remarkable candor, Millett charts her months with Sita and the inexorable shift from passionate abandon to abandonment. As each fragile thread of their love dissolves, Millett dwells on what drew them together, recounting all the hopes, tricks, and evasions that made up their erotic dance. Obsessive and impassioned, Sita speaks with sharp immediacy to everyone who has ever experienced the exhilaration and despair of love. -Publisher's synopsis of the book
"Millett's exhibition, curated by Kathy O'Dell for the art gallery at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and traveling under the title 'Kate Millett, Sculptor: The First 38 Years,' clearly illustrates that the artist's interests, be they psychological, political, or social...address, primarily, the human condition. From the first room of the exhibition alone, which begins with a written introduction to Millett's tightly intertwined, activist career and life and ends with her 1978 installation The Kitchen Table, the viewer is made aware that this is not going to be a light 'n' lively show."
"With mesmerizing detail, Millett re-creates this American tragedy. Shocking and poignant, 'The Basement' rocks some of our most basic notions of family, morality, and the cultural repression of female sexuality."
The cover of Millett's novel, Sita, is a silkscreen made by the author.
"Everyday holding it together just as it comes apart again. Another leaves, something else breaks or won’t start. The money’s gone or the weather turns against us. Big as life, this farm filling the whole sky with passion." - Kate Millett, Everyday Holding it Together
"Written in the early 1980s and published by Simon & Schuster in 1990, Millett’s The Looney-Bin Trip, which recounts her own story, brought the horrifying system to life—her family’s pathology; her diagnosis as manic-depressive; her forced incarcerations in mental institutions in California, Minnesota, New York, and Ireland; her lawsuit in a Minnesota court (which she won); the devastating effects of her lithium treatment; and her prolonged struggle to assert her rights against the authority wielded by the profession of psychiatry at a time when “patient rights” did not exist as a practice let alone as a concept." - Ellen Messer-Davidow, the Chair of the Department of English at the University of Minnesota
From one of the most influential figures of the last twenty years...comes this this brilliant work in which Kate Millett sets out a new theory of politics for our time, a harrowing view of the modern state based on the practice of torture as a method of rule, as conscious policy...The literary version of their experience is the most arresting; it prevails and persuades with the greatest effect; the reality of the victim, the social and psychological climate of life under dictatorship, the moment of capture when one is “disappeared,” that pivotal electronic second after which nothing is ever the same. -Publisher's synopsis of the book
Art in America's December 1995 issue features a review on Millett's art work by critic Lilly Wei: "In all her books---from the influential Sexual Politics(1970) to last year's Politics of Cruelty---Millett is a layered, complex and persuasive writer. Unfortunately, while engagingly understated, her exhibition lacked real punch...I have always admired Kate Millett's intelligence, extreme probity and abiding commitment to a more compassionate world. While these qualities were never in doubt in this venture, the transition from the literary to the visual realm was not as memorable as it might have been."
Kate Millett’s tremulous and hauntingly beautiful memoir begins with a telephone call from Minnesota where her mother is dying. Her return home to a severe, intelligent, and controlling matriarch is the catalyst for a meditation on her upbringing in middle America and her subsequent outcast status as a political activist, artist, and lesbian...Throughout, Millett confronts her fears of losing her mother, the anchor to a world she has long ago rejected but which continues to define her. Echoing Philip Roth’s Patrimony, Millett writes with great poignancy about caring for the person who brought her into the world. A role reversal that brings with it both devastation and grace. -Publisher's synopsis of the book
"I decided to honor courage in the Arts. To recognize artists, musicians, collectors, curators, writers – those who sought the truth in their work, and had the courage to stick to it, no matter what. And with this courage, I see an avenue to peace..." -Yoko Ono
“I am so moved to have been chosen to present the Lambda Pioneer award to Kate Millett, someone I have known for more than 55 years, and a true pioneer in life as well as in literature.” -Dr. Eleanor Pam
Millett gathers with Gloria Steinem and Susan Brownmiller.
Millett is inducted into the Women's Hall of Fame based on her many contributions in education and art.
"Because your first book, Sexual Politics, has been hailed as the first work of academic feminist literary criticism and a foundation of feminist theory, and laid the groundwork for feminist studies that have transformed the academy; because your work as an author, sculptor, filmmaker, and international activist has shone a light on persons we have left in the shadows; because your courage and commitment have never wavered in your tireless advocacy for civil, disability, and human rights, including the rights of persons with mental illness, across the globe; because without your fearless scholarship, violence against women may never have become an international human rights issue; and because you have persevered in the face of the hardships that are visited upon those whose ideas are both controversial and ahead of their time..." -President Eric Kaler honoring Kate Millett's work and influence
We'd love to hear from you. Please send questions or feedback to the below email addresses.
Before contacting us, you may wish to visit our FAQs page which has lots of useful info on Tiki-Toki.
We can be contacted by email at: hello@tiki-toki.com.
You can also follow us on twitter at twitter.com/tiki_toki.
If you are having any problems with Tiki-Toki, please contact us as at: help@tiki-toki.com
Close