Norma Swenson, an author of the 1970s global bestseller Our Bodies, Ourselves, died May 11 at age 93. The New York Times reported that Swenson "was working to educate women about childbirth, championing their right to have a say about how they delivered their babies, when she met the members of the collective that had put out the first rough version of what would become the feminist health classic Our Bodies, Ourselves. It was around 1970, and she recalled a few of the women attending a meeting she was holding in Newton, Mass., where she lived. It did not go well. One of them shouted at her, 'You are not a feminist, you'll never be a feminist and you need to go to school!' "
"I was stricken," Swenson recalled in a StoryCorps interview in 2018. "But also feeling that maybe she was right. I needed to know more things."
Despite the initial tension, the members of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective invited Swenson to join their group, and she went on to help create Our Bodies, Ourselves. The New England Free Press published an initial rough version in 1970 and it became an immediate underground success, selling 225,000 copies. After Simon & Schuster published the book in 1973, "much gussied up and expanded, it became a juggernaut," the Times noted.
In 1977, Swenson and Judy Norsigian, another core member of the collective, toured 10 European countries to meet with women's groups who were putting together their own versions of Our Bodies, Ourselves. Swenson would later help oversee the international editions and adaptations, as well as lecture around the world.
"Norma was always committed to an intersectional approach," Norsigian said. "She made sure the activism could fit people's lifestyles. How they could do things with limited resources. How to tailor the work to specific communities in less industrialized countries. She helped breastfeeding support groups in the Philippines, for example, and met with a doctor in Bangladesh who was advocating for indigenous production of essential drugs."
Last updated in 2011, Our Bodies, Ourselves has sold more than four million copies and been translated into 34 languages. The nonprofit behind the book, which provides health resources to women, is now based at Suffolk University in Boston.
