Righteous Sisterhood : The Politics and Power of an All-Women's Motorcycle Club.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hoiland, Sarah L.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women motorcyclists--United States.

Women motorcyclists.

Motorcycle clubs--United States.

Motorcycle clubs.

Motorcycling--Social aspects--United States.

Motorcycling.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (170 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2025.

Summary:

A righteous sister identifies herself as a biker. She might wrench, or maintain, her own bike, and she prefers to ride with other righteous sisters. Righteous Sisterhood is Sarah Hoiland's insightful ethnography about an all-women motorcycle club (MC). She recounts stories of women bikers for whom riding in an MC is "an act of rebellion" and "liberating" even as it constrains-a reactionary populist version of the American Dream dipped in "girl power."Granted unprecedented access to the MC's initiation rituals, annual ceremonies, and the extensive socialization process, Hoiland investigates this fascinating subculture, why women choose to join, and why, in some cases, they exit or become exiled. Righteous Sisterhood also reveals complex and contradictory gender and political dynamics within the club and within the larger subculture. The MC provides a unique, liberatory, womanist space within the larger male-dominated MC social world, but these women remain outsiders, with political voices that are lost in the misogyny of alt-right spaces. As Hoiland emphasizes, the quest for righteous sisterhood is about finding individual excellence and camaraderie while seeking recognition and immortality within the MC.

Contents:

Introduction: The 1960s: the creation of the "all-American bogeyman"

Women bikers and righteous sisters

Methodology and authorship

Biker semiotics and semantics

Breakdown of the parts

Citizenship in the biker nation

A patching ceremony

A brief history of RSMC

Patches as sacred symbols

A political community

Bodies and structures

Conclusion

Becoming a righteous sister

Spirit ride

Theorizing righteous sisterhood

Dreaming of righteous sisterhood

Initiation, Marrying in

Righteousness and the realm of action

An awards ceremony

Achieving arete

The public space of appearances

Gifts and the space of appearances

From righteous sister to civil death

A beginning and an ending

"She's dead to me"

Life changes

Until death do us part

Ex-ethnographer

Epilogue

Notes

References

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781439925942

1439925941

OCLC:

1456554412