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Sarah Hoiland, "Righteous Sisterhood: The Politics and Power of an All-Women's Motorcycle Club" (Temple UP, 2025)
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- [00:01]
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Dr. Sarah Hoyland
Limu emu and.
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- [01:32]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:36]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hello. And welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Sarah Hoyland about her book titled Righteous Sisterhood, the Politics and Power of an All Women's Motorcycle Club, published by Temple University Press in 2025. Now, this book is really interesting because it's takes us right into, well, as the subtitle suggests, an all women's motorcycle club. But it also helps us contextualize and understand how unique and interesting this particular environment is because we also get to learn about motorcycle clubs more generally. We get to learn about women and gender roles in this whole universe and the particular club as well that's at the centre of the book. So. So there's a whole lot of things for us to discuss here. Thank you so much, Sarah, for joining me on the podcast.
- [02:30]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
Thank you for having me on, Dr. Melter. And congratulations on the 1000th interview milestone back in October.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Thank you. That was a very fun milestone to achieve and I'm so thrilled that you're part of my second thousand. But can we start off before we get into the details of your fabulous book with a bit of an introduction from you about yourself and why you decided to write this book?
- [02:55]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
Absolutely. So, I'm a professor of sociology at HOSTOS Community College, which is part of the City University of New York, also known as cuny. The why for this book has changed quite a bit over time. Like many PhD grads, I was encouraged to publish my dissertation, and I knew that I had a story to tell. But the reality of publishing with an academic press was daunting, particularly with a 54 teaching load, which is nine classes per year. So I realized that I did not want to publish my dissertation as it was. I wanted to turn one chapter into a book, which essentially meant starting over. Today, however, the wise are really the women that I dedicated the book to, the Righteous Sisters, that involve me in their social world. My mom, three women who've been supporting this book for nearly a decade. Julia, Megan, and Rhea. And really the support of a writing group that I was part of through the City University of New York.
- [03:59]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, I definitely understand the idea that books take a lot of effort, even when they come from a dissertation. You'd think that that's all the writing that needs to be done, but it often never is. So thank you for giving us that backstory. I think it's really helpful to understand how books kind of finally come to be in the world. Is there anything further we should understand about why you chose this topic within the dissertation and as the kind of piece of it to take out into a book?
- [04:24]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
Yeah, so I think, you know, there was really a part of me that felt like the dissertation was unfinished. I had one chapter in which I interviewed my key informant for Righteous Sisterhood, who I call Sandy, a pseudonym. And it felt like to some degree that her story wasn't fully told. I discovered her kind of late, late in my research process. I was able to interview her several times and get a book chapter put together. But I really had this deeper desire to write an entire book about her and the motorcycle club that she created, who I call Righteous Sisterhood Motorcycle Club.
- [05:06]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Got it. Okay. That's definitely an impulse I think many listeners can understand kind of going, oh, this isn't quite fully there. Like, let's keep pulling this string and see what happens. So, in fact, I'd love for you to tell us about what happens when you pull the string. Like, how did you go about researching this topic? I mean, deciding on this topic and researching this book as well?
- [05:26]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
Sure, absolutely. So, you know, the research for Motorcycle Club is a bit unorthodox. You know, bikers, like regular people, have jobs and lives. And so for most bikers, they're not full time bikers. And so my observations of Righteous Sisterhood Motorcycle club occurred primarily during their annual meetings, which they call Nationals. And it was a time in which all of the women from the club gathered in one place. And so these women came from across the United States, as well as some countries in Europe. And so this annual opportunity allowed me to really see the club in action. And during those, you know, so each year I would travel and go and basically do participant observation. I would conduct several interviews with members that agreed to be interviewed. And then at other times during the year, I would go and interview individual members. And I was also given access to several documents that were part of the club's history. And so those sort of secondary resources. Well, primary resources, I'm sorry, help me to sort of understand both the history and the culture of the mc.
- [06:51]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah.
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Dr. Sarah Hoyland
Okay.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
That's very helpful to understand the level of detail you were able to go into to figure all of this out. Going back then to the title of the book, Righteous Sisterhood. Can you tell us more what that term means? That's not just a catchy book title. I mean, it is, but it's not just that. There's a lot of meanings encoded within it. So can you tell us about how we might parse that term and kind of how you came to use it as the title?
- [07:17]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
Sure. So, you know, again, I think I really struggled writing for a long time because I could not find the language to describe what I was observing. So in the literature on motorcycle clubs, it was predominantly focused on men, for one, and it was written by men. And so whenever women would appear, there were derogatory names used to describe them. So like a whole body of literature calls women old ladies, broads, mamas, and there's kind of these typology surrounding those terms. Barbara Jones, an anthropologist and a motorcyclist, came along and wrote a great book called Bike Lust that she published in 2001. And she added some new terminology. And those terms were lady biker, woman biker, and woman rider. So woman biker got closer to what I was observing in rsmc because Jones defines women bikers as. She says that they maintain their own bikes, they expected to be treated as equals, they prefer to ride with men. And I'm quoting her directly here, she says they may present a variety of demeanors, anything from sexy broad to hard living biker, but she never makes nice, end quote. And so that got much closer to what I was observing. But at the same time, the Righteous Sisters did not prefer to ride with men. So I started to think about this might be a space in which I have to create a New term. And as you know, Miranda, you know, publishers and academics don't like new terminology being tossed into the field, particularly when it's an author's first book. And so, you know, I really sort of tried to figure out whether I could adapt and adopt existing terminology. And. And I just came down to the fact that I couldn't. I couldn't name the thing that I was observing. And so, like, the history of righteous within motorcycle clubs. I go into the entomology of the word a bit in the book. It originates from the US Jazz culture. It was predominantly used among African Americans and the bikers of the 1940s and 50s, and eventually the 1960s adopted the term righteous to talk about men who were like, especially excellent in the motorcycle club world. And so it was a very intentional move to take a word that has great meaning in motorcycle clubs, the word righteous, and situate it specifically to describe women who also are in the same world, but had previously been unacknowledged. So there weren't any books about women's motorcycle clubs. There were hardly any articles or any sort of even film depictions about women's motorcycle clubs until quite recently. And so this term sort of encompassed what I was observing. Right. This. And I bring in some political theory from Hannah Rent to really look at, like, the space of appearances, that is the motorcycle club itself and the way that that space can generate and promote this type of excellence, which Arendt calls Arete. Right. In a political sphere. And so the Righteous Sister, as I define it in the book, she identifies herself as a biker. She might wrench or maintain her own bike, but she might not. And the key here is that she prefers to ride with other righteous sisters.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
That's really helpful to unpack that term and what it means. And I appreciate also the behind the scenes about kind of how tricky it is to think through those sorts of things. It might seem small to someone perhaps not engaged in research of like, oh, well, it's just a term. It's like, no, there's a lot of thinking that goes into it. So thank you for taking us behind the scenes into a bit of your process. I think all of this, therefore means that we have enough foundation to talk a bit about the All Women's Motorcycle Club specifically that you focus on. Can you tell us a bit about sort of how and roughly when it starts?
- [11:39]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
Sure. So the club that I focus on started sometime in the 1980s. You know, I. I did my best in the book to protect the actual club's name. So. So I can situate it in the 1980s, pretty comfortably. Um, however, when I started doing the research, I went to Hollister, which is the home of the famous infamous 1947 motorcycle rally slash riot. And, you know, this was the site of films like the Wild One, the sort of Marlon Brando esque character. And Hollister is a real place and they have a real archive of documents describing that motorcycle rally. And what I found in these old rusty file cabinets really piqued my interest. And this was still kind of at the point, like post dissertation, pre getting serious about writing a book. And I ended up writing an article about sort of that archival research. But I found a plethora of photos of women wearing patched jackets and vests from the 1940s. And this was a part of the history that had previously been completely unacknowledged. You know, Hollister was always about men. Women were kind of. They were depicted as, you know, passengers or side pieces. There was one journalist who particularly wrote about women in very misogynistic terms throughout all of his reporting on Hollister. And so, you know, what I saw was a completely different kind of. Of biker woman, happy, smiling, confident, you know, arms draped around sailors. Some pretty amazing images of like, what that particular time period was like. And they really challenged the dominant narrative about what women were doing during the sort of origin phase of the American male outlaw motorcyclist.
- [13:52]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that's really interesting to think about kind of what's there when we go back and look at these sorts of archival materials. If we're thinking then about the structures of this club, is it the same sort of idea of kind of you look back and see that the story we've always been told about the men, kind of the same thing was sort of happening with the women in terms of the structure of the club looks the same or close enough in terms of how one joins or what a patch means, or how the hierarchy works, or is the structure of the club itself also pretty different?
- [14:24]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
So historically, what it looked like was that the clubs were co ed. And so in those early photographs from the late 40s, men and women were together, they were members of the same clubs, they both were riding motorcycles. It seemed, you know, oddly egalitarian in consideration of what the sort of strictly sex segregated motorcycle clubs look like today. So I trace that shift to the 1960s and sort of the rise of the Hells Angels in the United States and then their movement globally. But what, you know, where a lot of this shift and change in terms of membership and who's allowed in and who can wear what it was over the patches themselves. And so the patches, you know, are incredibly significant. And the split actually occurred because male motorcycle club members were afraid that women could not physically defend the patch. And so it made the clubs vulnerable to other clubs trying to take their patches, almost like a capture the flag kind of thing. And so at some point, women were completely excluded from the motorcycle club world, which is, is not the riding club world. Right. This is a distinction I make early in the book. So like for example, a local Harley Davidson chapter where women might wear like a single patch on their back and go riding on the weekends in a co ed riding club. That's very different than the motorcycle clubs that the book is focusing on. So in the motorcycle club world, which is a three piece patch situation, women were excluded completely from membership in the 1960s. And in fact, in some of the clubs, women started to wear what are known as property of patches. And so their vest on the back would have a property of and then the member's name. And so, you know, in some ways, like analogous to a wedding ring, where it shows that you're taken, those property of patches signify that this person is protected by the club, that she, you know, in some ways belongs to this particular member. And so, you know, clearly women's membership was very limited and it was contingent upon their connection to a particular male member. Where Righteous Sisterhood Motorcycle club comes in, you know, is sort of at the height of this very sex segregated world in which there was virtually no place for women to be full members of a male motorcycle club. And so they created their own motorcycle club and it was modeled almost exactly like the male motorcycle clubs. The same hierarchy, the same kinds of titles, the same patch structure. And so, you know, in many ways it's parallel to what was already in existence with the MMCs.
- [17:40]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Okay, that's definitely helpful to understand, not just that they're parallel, but why they are as well. And in fact, patches sound really interesting. There's clearly a lot going on there. So can you tell us more about the symbolic power of them as well in the book you talk about their political and economic power too.
- [17:57]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
Sure, absolutely. So, and I think I'll step back just a second because sort of in order to understand patches, I think the initiation period is one that I ended up devoting a chapter of the book to, because the way in which a person earns a patch, it can be a years long process. So, you know, there are many similarities between men and women's clubs. The women's club, interestingly Enough had a longer initiation period than many of its male counterparts. So a woman might join Righteous Sisterhood Motorcycle Club and not become a full patch member, meaning she has all three patches for three to four years, maybe even five years, which is a really long time to be kind of in this initiation phase. So, you know, the women took on that very serious initiation rite and ritual and even lengthened it. And I think, you know, that did a couple of things politically for them. It increased the level of respect they had in the wider motorcycle world. Right? So when a woman's club comes into a predominantly male world, they have a lot to prove, right, to the other motorcycle clubs that they're legitimate, that they're serious. And so that extended initiation period went a long way to do that, particularly for Righteous Sisterhood Motorcycle Club. Another piece of that is, is the mentoring that takes place. So what I observed in RSMC was a very nuanced, mentorship, tiered phase of initiation. So a newcomer sometimes called a prospect in the male world. In Righteous Sisterhood Motorcycle Club, that term prospect was not used very often. And so it can be a bit of a derogatory term. It's sort of like, you know, hey, newbie. But in the women's world, they were just called sister almost from the day one. And so that kind of acceptance and belonging and the very detailed and meticulous way in which women were sponsored by more veteran members, I think was one point of distinction that I observed between the two types of clubs. In the male motorcycle club, a lot of times it was more about, you know, how much can a prospect put up with? And I think, you know, this is one area where the types of shows I've seen, you know, like Sons of Anarchy or the Mayans, you know, they depict this prospect as being like a grunt worker for the club. And I observed very similar things in real life. The women, on the other hand, that wasn't the role of the prospect. So part of, like, the solidarity and the sisterhood was related to community, and it was related to people working together to accomplish a variety of tasks. And so the kind of strict division of labor and the. The ways in which power was exercised, I observed it to be very different in Righteous Sisterhood Motorcycle Club, I guess, in terms of the patches themselves, they're really like a flag. And so the way that I try to break it down in the book is to think about, you know, Righteous Sisterhood Motorcycle Club is a nation. They call themselves a nation, a biker nation, like capital N. And the male motorcycle clubs do the same Right. They view themselves as their own nation state. And in that sense, the patch serves as the flag. It's literally like the central symbol that people are loyal to, right, that they wear on their back in a way that tells everybody what nation they belong to. So it's a very visible symbol of citizenship and membership. And there's also a lot of rules that go along with these patches. So I talked a little bit about who gets to wear one, and that's sort of a massive part of these clubs is the initiation. And then, you know, there's a whole nother part about who gets to keep their patches and who, you know, sort of gets honors on top of honors once they're a full patch member of the club. So I thought I might just give one quick story to kind of describe the rules about patches. So much like a flag, there are rules about, you know, a patch can't touch the ground. There are also rules about outsiders and who can touch a patch and who can't. It can be very disrespectful to touch a three piece patch member without their express consent. But it's very common, right, for full patch members to hug each other and kind of tap the patches heartily as a show of respect. So one example that one of the people I'd interviewed, it told me this was a male who was a full patch member of a men's motorcycle club. He was in a motorcycle accident and he was wearing his patches. And so his first phone call when, you know, his bike hit the pavement and he was laying on the ground and knowing that he dislocated his shoulder was to the brothers in his club. And then 911 was called. So they both arrived at the same time, a bunch of patched motorcycle club members and the ambulance and the emergency medical services. And so the, you know, fallen biker told his brothers that they needed to get not only his leather vest off of him, but also the full patch T shirt he had on below the vest. And so, you know, the three or four brothers from his club took off both items over the dislocated shoulder as the shocked EMS kind of stood and watched this unfold, you know, telling him not to move and, you know, very concerned about the injury itself. But all of that was done to avoid having those clothing items cut off, which would have been the first protocol for ems. And so, you know, that particular example is very significant because it just demonstrates the way in which that sacred object is valued.
- [24:29]
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- [24:58]
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- [25:26]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
Hi, I'm here to pick up my son, Milo. There's no Milo here who picked up my son from school.
- [25:32]
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- [25:39]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
You don't understand. It was just the five of us. So this was all planned.
- [25:43]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
What are you gonna do?
- [25:44]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
I will do whatever it takes to get my son back.
- [25:47]
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- [26:11]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that's a very clear story that explains exactly the stakes that you're talking about. So thank you for explaining that to us in terms then of these processes of joining the clubs. Especially with the women's club that you focus on. As you mentioned, there's quite a lengthy initiation process. What are some of the reasons then that motivate people to go through this? Like are there kind of standard reasons you came across when you asked women why they joined the Righteous Sisterhood? Or what was the kind of range of answers you got to that question?
- [26:44]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
I think for a lot of the women, you know, and there's also an interesting, you know, kind of as the globe is graying, the motorcycle clubs are graying as well. And so many of the new members of Righteous Sisterhood Motorcycle Club were, you know, I would generally say like 50 plus. They were middle aged women who, some of whom were quite accomplished in terms of career, were maybe on the edge of retirement and looking, you know, had. Had been a motorcycle rider their whole life, right. That was a common thread that the women had always ridden. And many had started riding quite young as teenagers or, you know, very young adults. And so they were looking for something to belong to, but for many of them, they were also looking for something that, you know, was greater than the individual parts. Right. And so Righteous Sisterhood motorcycle club has a really significant philanthropic motivation behind it. So every year, the women engage in a variety of different fundraising activities, many of which are geared toward raising awareness about things like child abuse or domestic violence or breast cancer, like kind of women, specific issues that many of them have experienced personally. And so, you know, the motorcycle club in some ways is a vehicle for them to, you know, carve out a space as a group of women who, you know, have some political power, you know, both inside as a club, but also with their communities and with the larger motorcycle club world to make a difference. And I think that motivation is quite different from the motivation I saw among the male motorcycle clubs. While they might participate in philanthropic activities, like, you know, a toys for tot ride or something like that, it was not as much a part of their day to day sort of routine activities, both at the chapter level, which is how they're organized, you know, either within cities or states or regions, but also at the national level. And so I think that particular thing about women coming together and feeling like that, together they can make a real difference about issues they care about was a primary motivating factor. I think, you know, also for women, it can be really hard to make lasting friendships as adults, as middle aged women who've devoted, you know, potentially their lives to family and maybe secondarily career or to career and maybe secondarily family, you know, just feeling split between. And so for many women, it was a time of their life when they had time, and they could devote that time to the Righteous Sisterhood motorcycle club and simultaneously have a nation full of sisters. You know, so many of them would talk about how much it meant to them to have, you know, the club at any given point was say, a hundred members, to have a hundred women that any one of them, they could pick up the phone and call, have someone to, you know, talk to, to listen to, to mentor, to be mentored. And so I think that sisterhood component was a real motivator for the women as well.
- [30:16]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Those are definitely some strong motivations and really interesting that they're different from what you found when you talked to male members of male motorcycle clubs that's definitely helpful to understand the kind of compare and contrast there. What about other aspects of kind of who's in these clubs? If we move beyond just thinking about gender, are these. Is for example, the women's club that you primarily focus on? Were these women you've mentioned a little bit about their age? What sorts of trends did you notice around things like race or sexuality?
- [30:48]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
So motorcycle clubs at large are still highly racially segregated, both in the men's motorcycle club world and, you know, in this growing world of women's motorcycle clubs. So RSMC was predominantly white. I observed a few members that I would have categorized as one depicted, you know, Native American tattoos. And during our extended interview, she talked a lot about her indigenous heritage. However, those things were never talked about and so same thing with sexuality. So RSMC was very clear that they were not, you know, what can be known as a dyke club, a gay club for women. And so I observed in my early years members who were gay, some of whom were married, some of whom had partners that were also members of the club. But this was an area that was highly protected and highly secretive. So in the book I try to describe, and I feel like it's still under theorized, but like in the biker world, they call this club business. And club business means it's off limits to anyone who's not in like the innermost chamber, which would be the highest parts of the hierarchy. So in general that would be a national president, it might be the national officers, and that's it. So even other members are generally not included in conversations that focus around something that would be considered club business. So in rsmc, like two areas that were real landmines for me as a researcher were race and sexuality. And so I kind of danced around and in these areas in which I just found walls of silence for nearly the 10 years that I was observing, and it didn't really get easier. Right. Like it. These things were hot button issues, particularly because of their historical significance. So, you know, as I mentioned before, a women's motorcycle club has an exceptionally high standard to live up to because it's still a male dominated world. And in many ways it's a misogynistic world. I experienced a couple of encounters where the women's motorcycle club was sharing space with men's motorcycle clubs. And they have to really fight to be respected. And so I think, you know, in some really crucial ways they conform to the dominant norms in the larger motorcycle club world in order to sort of keep the space and the respect that they had carved Out.
- [33:52]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hmm, that's really interesting to hear about. Especially after the motivations for joining being different. And yet some aspects like this are being so, so similar. And for some of these reasons is really fascinating. So thank you for telling us about that aspect of the research. Moving then from the sort of things that are not discussed widely amongst the membership to the things that are. What are those things? What are the kinds of behaviours or actions that go well beyond discussions of the senior leadership and are kind of touted throughout the organization of like, yes, this is great. More like this person. What is that in this case?
- [34:27]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
That's a great question. So with Righteous Sisterhood Motorcycle Club, it was fascinating because they had a formal award structure. And so every year at the annual gathering they would do a club wide nomination. So this was something that was not determined by leadership. It was determined by the entire nation of women who were present. They would vote for a Sister of the Year and that award was highly coveted and it was really a big deal. So one woman out of, you know, say 75, 90, 100 would be publicly recognized as excellent, as like the epitome of what sisterhood is. And so part of that recognition ceremony included the president reading some of the nominations for that particular sister. And so people would tell stories about how this particular woman went above and beyond or helped them. And you know, many times this was a very emotional recognition. The woman who was about to receive the award, you know, might be teary eyed, might even be crying. Other women, you know, who might have been sponsored by that woman or might have, you know, been one of the nominators, are also very emotionally involved. And so, you know, the ways that women would get elevated to that were really varied. And this is the thing that I thought, you know, from beginning to end was really beautiful about RSMC is that it really provided this, you know, again, a space of appearances for women who might be marginalized in society to achieve a kind of excellence that's quite unique within this larger group of women. And so, you know, a woman might be recognized, you know, for example, they might have a particular skill set that's highly valuable. So I go into a bit about, you know, sort of the increasing numbers of veterans that join rsmc. And so, you know, female veterans have a lot of experience with hierarchies and, you know, getting specific tasks done. They're used to being a gender minority in a male dominated world, right? They just, they kind of come with this bevy of resources that they are really eager to give back to the motorcycle club. And so sometimes excellence is very skill based. Other times excellence might, you know, look like someone who does a lot of physical labor around the clubhouse. Someone who is mowing the grass or someone who is maintaining the property when everyone else is away, or, you know, someone who is particularly loving or caring to another sister. And so the range within which that could be I found to be really fascinating. There wasn't kind of a one size fits all, you know, righteous sister in the way that I saw that in the men's club. Right. It wasn't rooted in violence, for example, one's propensity to, you know, exert their will over someone else. Like that was not part of being a righteous sister or a Sister of the Year. So, yeah, I think. I think that kind of explains the range. But that I think was one of the most interesting things I observed.
- [37:57]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that is really interesting indeed. So thank you for telling us about that here. What about then the kind of opposite, I suppose, of giving someone a reward for good behaviour? What if someone was doing the opposite of what good behavior was? Is it possible for someone to be removed from the club? How does that work and how does that then impact all of these? What you're describing are really close bonds. So what happens if something disrupts them?
- [38:26]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
Yeah, this part of club life was also, you know, so it fits neatly into that club business category where exits and exiles, which are two different ways to leave the club. So typically an exit is on someone's own terms. They choose to leave and the club, you know, says yes, basically. And then there were exiles where, you know, women were removed from the club. And so in the motorcycle club world in general, this is the same across both men's and women's clubs. Like an exile, a forced removal is a complete rupture. So, you know, I liken it to a civic death in which that person is dead to the club. And that means both in terms of membership, but it also means that any personal connections to an ex member have to be severed. And so in exile that I sort of just loosely observed, I was still new to observing, but I noticed, you know, kind of some fermenting. I don't want to say. Let me think about how to describe this. So there were some rumors that a group within the club were trying to overthrow the president, meaning they were going to use the election in order to remove her as the sitting president. And so the. The president. Sandy, who's my key informant throughout this, described this to me as a couple attempt. And so they kind of, you know, got to the bottom of this coup and those members were removed. And I found that example to be particularly interesting because Righteous Sisterhood Motorcycle Club is, is pitched as a democracy. Right. Women vote for the leadership. You know, many things are kind of discussed and debated in, in whole group business meetings, which, you know, are seven to eight hours, all members are invited to attend. I was allowed to attend, which was fascinating. But this kind of, you know, the bit of paranoia I heard about a coup and trying to topple the existing leadership really struck me as anti democratic. And so that particular member was removed and all communication with her was cut off. So the way that that looks in terms of how the club communicates that to its members was generally through a text tree. So members would get a text saying so and so is out, cease communication. And that was the end of the discussion. In some cases, there would be a period of time in which a member could request to say goodbye to someone, for example. So if someone had been a member, like this particular exile I was talking about for many, many years, she had deep relationships with other women in the club, but also with the women's children in the club. Right. So it was really, there were events that were very family friendly. And so those ruptures were not only just sort of woman to woman, sister to sister, but they were also extended to the members of the family who were not supposed to contact an exiled member.
- [41:57]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
That is pretty intense. I can only imagine kind of figuring that out and then figuring out how to write all that down. And, you know, I think that's been true of many of the things we've discussed, that there's all sorts of complexity embedded in this work that you've done. So thank you for deciding to write about it and coming here to tell us about it. But it does make me curious where your gaze might have turned to next. Obviously you've got a lot of teaching. Maybe that's where your focus is at the moment. But is anything you're kind of currently working on or looking to work on, whether or not it's a book that you want to give us a brief sneak preview of?
- [42:32]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
Absolutely. So sisterhood does not seem to want to leave me. And so one of the things I've been working on is a grant funded project for a program that I created. It's called the Holistic Oasis for Parents Education. And it's a program to support parenting students and their children in the summer who are students at Hostos Community College, where I teach in the South Bronx. And so, you know, we've been working on this together, my team and I, for the last four years. And as we were doing focus groups and interviews with participants, the predominantly female group of mothers kept using the word sisterhood. And I thought, oh my gosh, here it is again. Right. Like, I can't get away from this sisterhood. And so, you know, that research has been really interesting because obviously they're not a motorcycle club, but they're a group of adult women traditionally much older than a college student who might be, you know, 18 to 22. And they're looking for community and they're looking for a sense of belonging to. And the research has been extremely rewarding because in this case, you know, I'm part of a group that has set up a structure that is very welcoming and very supportive for women that, you know, like some of the Righteous Sisters have been, you know, I don't want to say marginalized in society, but have suffered some of the structural inequalities that are rampant in the country right now. And historically. And so that work has been really interesting. I've also been working on a book with a 94 year old woman from Harlem and that's really more of a passion project. It's a life history book that's going to look at her loves, her losses. Harlem is the backdrop and the setting for all of this from 1931 to the present. So we're, we're just about wrapping up the final chapter of that book and that'll hopefully come out in 2026. Goodness.
- [44:47]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
You're working on a whole bunch of things. That all sounds really interesting. So best of luck with the projects.
- [44:52]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
Thank you so much.
- [44:54]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
In the meantime, of course, listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Righteous the Politics and Power of an All Women's Motorcycle Club, published by Temple University Press in 2025. Sarah, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [45:08]
Dr. Sarah Hoyland
Thank you, Miranda.
- [45:21]
Mystery Caller / Character in Drama
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Dr. Sarah Hoyland
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If you looked at Audible, it was.
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Kind of like growth, growth and then growth.
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Mystery Caller / Character in Drama
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