The Women's Review of Books articles from April 2002

The Women's Review of Books archives from April 2002

History lessons.(women in Afghanistan)
April 1, 2002... In Afghanistan's decades of confrontation with modernity, women have always been the focus of conflict. Afghanistan is a harsh country that has seen nothing but the bitterness of war and poverty during the past twenty years and more. Yet...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2002... Editor's Note: King-Kok Cheung, professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, now a visiting professor at Hong Kong University contributed "Pedagogies of Resonance," an essay about her experience teaching Asian...

Lives on the line.(Marge Piercy, 'Sleeping with Cats: A Memoir'; Andrea Dworkin, 'Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant')
April 1, 2002... Sleeping with Cats: A Memoir by Marge Piercy. New York: William Morrow, 2002, 345 pp., $25.95 hardcover. Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant by Andrea Dworkin. New York: Basic Books, 2001, 198 pp., $24.00 hardcover.. ...

Mind over matter.(Susan J. Brison, 'Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self')
April 1, 2002... Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self by Susan J. Brison. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002, 156 pp., $19.95 hardcover. Susan Brison, trained as a philosopher and employed as an academic, reminds us that in her...

Veteran's day.(Sigrid Nunez, 'For Rouenna: A Novel')
April 1, 2002... For Rouenna: A Novel by Sigrid Nunez. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001, 230 pp., $22.00 hardcover. The greatest poetry is that which is writ ten for those who can't write poetry," Simone Weil once said. Sigrid Nunez' latest...

Uphill all the way.('Until Death Do Us Part: My Struggle to Reclaim Colombia' by Ingrid Betancourt)
April 1, 2002... Until Death Do Us Part: My Struggle ton Reclaim Colombia by Ingrid Betancourt, translated by Steven Rendall. New York: HarperCollins/Ecco Press, 2002, 228 pp., $24.95 hardcover. Until Death Do Us Part opens with a chilling scene. It is...

Honey child.(Sue Monk Kidd, 'The Secret Life of Bees')
April 1, 2002... The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. New York: Viking, 2002, 301 pp., $24.95 hardcover. Anyone who reads a great deal of fiction--for the purposes of reviewing, teaching, contest judging, "blurbing"--will tell you that authority...

Little joy on the prairie.(Margaret Bell, 'When Montana and I Were Young: A Frontier Memoir' ed. by Mary Clearman Blew)
April 1, 2002... When Montana and I Were Young: A Frontier Memoir by Margaret Bell, edited by Mary Clearman Blew. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2002, 285 pp., $35.00 hardcover. Breaking Clean by Judy Blunt. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002, 303 pp.,...

Straight and narrow.('The Corset: A Cultural History' by Valerie Steele)
April 1, 2002... New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001, 202pp., $39.95 hardcover. The lure of the corset is both glorious and notorious. It is the object of flowery verse and painterly strokes, scorned in medical journals and subjected to the...

Pigments of the imagination.(Susan Vreeland, 'The Passion of Artemisia'; Harriet Scott Chessman, 'Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper')
April 1, 2002... The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland. New York: Viking, 2002, 320 pp., $24.95 hardcover. Mary Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper by Harriet Scott Chessman. New York: Seven Stories Press/The Permanent Press, 2001, 164 pp., $24.00...

Escape routes.('Imagining Medea: Rhodessa Jones and Theater for Incarcerated Women' by Rena Fraden; 'Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women's Prison' by Jean Trounstine)
April 1, 2002... Imagining Medea: Rhodessa Jones and Theater for Incarcerated Women by Rena Fraden. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001, 245 pp., $39.95 hardcover, $18.95 paper. Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women's...

Locked doors, steep stairs.(Kathryn H. Anthony, 'Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession')
April 1, 2002... Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession by Kathryn H. Anthony. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001, 271 pp., $34.95 hardcover. How far back do we have to reach in order to find the few...

View of Utrecht.(Poem)
April 1, 2002... It's over, she thinks, feeling her psyche crust, at last seeing through the far end of the telescope, as though the year were a Dutch landscape, the canal only visible the moment before someone stumbles into the...

Unlikely alliances.('Radical Women in Latin America: Left and Right' edited by Victoria Gonzalez and Karen Kampwirth)
April 1, 2002... Radical Women in Latin America: Left and Right edited by Victoria Gonzlez and Karen Kampwirth. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001, 332 pp., $18.95 paper. A course on gender in Latin America? That must be...

Avatar.(Poem)
April 1, 2002... She thought of her libido as a bird in the house, blue-feathered, with a spun sugar beak. What it lived on was a mystery, although the house smelled of bitter almonds, and when it rained the walls were sticky with syrup....