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2018 Winner: Best Biography

" Moving, well-written, at times poetic."


Robert Richter,

  Award-winning Documentary Filmmaker and lifelong friend of Fay Stender

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"A necessary remembrance of an amazing woman."
 

-Penny Cooper

 Member of the California Trial Lawyers Hall of Fame

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"A compelling read — Once again, Lise Pearlman has done a masterful job capturing this tumultuous and instructive time."

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- Barry Scheck,

  Co-Director of The Innocence Project

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"I was a History Major with a Women's Study Minor in college, and this book would have been a perfect addition to my reading list"

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- Golden State Media Concepts Book Review

  (5-Star Review via Amazon.com)

"Call Me Phaedra is powerful and tragic. Lise Pearlman is  a terrific, skilled writer. I worked closely with Fay Stender and Charles Garry when they collaborated to defend my younger brother Huey -- the co-founder of the Black Panther Party -- in his 1968 death penalty trial. The book answered and elaborated on questions I have long puzzled over. It enlightened and rekindled sadness [in recalling] a wonderful and harrowing time."

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--Dr. Melvin Newton, Prof. Emeritus Merritt College, first head of its ethnic studies department.

CALL ME PHAEDRA
The Life and Times of Movement Lawyer Fay Stender  
[Regent Press 2018]

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Readers are treated to an inside view of the circle of Bay Area activists who boldly challenged the status quo to push

for "liberty and justice for all" during: 


* The McCarthy Era               

* Free Speech Era    

* The Rise of Black Power
* The Civil Rights Movement  

* Vietnam War        

* Women's Movement

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Fay Stender's extraordinary life intertwined with legendary activists JESSICA MITFORD (who called Stender her "frenemy"), MARIO SAVIO, CESAR CHAVEZ, Berkeley Barb publisher MAX SCHERR, and Yippie anti-war activist JERRY RUBIN, among others. She heard that Oakland police used her picture for target practice when she represented

Black Panther leader HUEY NEWTON on charges he murdered a beat cop. Prison officials nicknamed her "the dragon lady" for acting as the mouthpiece for death row inmate GEORGE JACKSON and other maximum security prisoners.

Fay's life would end in tragedy like the ancient Greek Queen Phaedra. She saw the irony and told close friends, 

 

"call me Phaedra."

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- REGENT PRESS

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