Susan Griffin

Background Griffin was born in Los Angeles, California on January 26, 1943. She attended the University of California, Berkeley, for two years, then transferred to San Francisco State College, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing (1965) and her Master of Arts degree (1973), both degrees under the tutelage of Kay Boyle. She taught as an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley as well as at Stanford University and California Institute of Integral Studies.

Griffin died from Parkinson's disease in Berkeley, California, on September 30, 2025, at the age of 82. Griffin's papers are located at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, at Harvard University.

Work Griffin wrote 21 books, including works of nonfiction, poetry, anthologies, plays, and a screenplay.

"Rape: The All-American Crime" (1971), an article published in Ramparts, was one of the first publications about rape from a feminist perspective.

Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (1978) has sold more than 100,000 copies, In this work she makes the case that although the pursuit of freedom of speech could lead to a position against the censorship of pornography, the freedom to create pornography leads to a compromise of "human liberation" (since liberation of humankind would include the emancipation of women). She argues that pornography and eros are separate and opposing ideas, with pornography "express[ing] not a yearning for sexual liberation but its opposite, a desire to silence eros." According to Griffin, pornography's origins are rooted in a widespread fear of nature, This, according to Griffin, teaches women to self-deprecate, and fuels an unhealthy, perverted culture.

Awards Griffin received a MacArthur grant for Peace and International Cooperation, NEA and Guggenheim Foundation fellowships, and a local Emmy Award for the play Voices. She is featured in the 2014 feminist history film She's Beautiful When She's Angry. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1993 for A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War.

Criticism Many critics praise Griffin's blunt takes and insights to the role of feminism in every major issue today, while others have criticized her writings for being too convoluted or ranting. Largely, reviews for Griffin's work take opposing views on the intertwining and complicated connections she suggests between the woman and larger worldly issues such as war, disease, pornography, and nature itself. In a review of What Her Body Thought: A Journey into the Shadows, Susan Dion of The Women's Review of Books wrote: "...Griffin is not merely reiterating old themes in feminist scholarship or the history of medicine; rather, she probes, ponders, and suggests different ways of considering many interrelated issues...Griffin's musings and hypotheses are fresh, smart, and instructive, if not always convincing."

Published works Woman and Nature: the Roaring Inside Her (1978) Ecofeminist treatise (1st Edition, has since been reprinted) Rape: The Politics of Consciousness (1979) OCLC 781089176 Pornography and Silence: Culture's Revenge Against Nature (1981) OCLC 964062418 "Sadomasochism and the erosion of self: a critical reading of Story of O," in Against Sadomasochism: A Radical Feminist Analysis, ed. Robin Ruth Linden (East Palo Alto, Calif. : Frog in the Well, 1982.), pp. 183–201 Unremembered Country: poems (Copper Canyon Press, 1987) OCLC 16905255 A Chorus of Stones: the Private Life of War (1993) Psychological aspects of violence, war, womanhood OCLC 1005479046 The Eros of Everyday Life: Essays on Ecology, Gender and Society (1995) OCLC 924501690 Bending Home: Selected New Poems, 1967-1998 (Copper Canyon Press, 1998) OCLC 245705378 What Her Body Thought: a Journey into the Shadows (1999) The Book of the Courtesans: a Catalogue of Their Virtues (2001) Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy: On Being an American Citizen (2008) Transforming Terror: Remembering the Soul of the World, co-edited with Karen Lofthus Carrington (University of California Press, 2011)