The Women's Review of Books articles from December 2004

The Women's Review of Books archives from December 2004

The challenging writings of Elfriede Jelinek: an Austrian feminist wins the Nobel prize in literature.(Critical Essay)(Biography)
December 1, 2004... This year's Nobel laureate in literature, Elfriede Jelinek, is a highly controversial author in her home country, where she is condemned for her relentlessly critical stance toward Austria's postwar politics and the mentality of its people....

Letter from the Editor.(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... Dear Friends, As most of you know by now, this issue of The Women's Review of Books is probably the last you will see in this form. Chronic budget shortfalls since the mid-1990s have forced us to suspend publication (for the details,...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... Dear Women's Review, Like the rest of your readers, I mourn the suspension of the WRB and I want to take the opportunity here, in this last issue, to acknowledge the enormous service you, the editors, have performed these last 20 years. It...

Biography of an autobiographer.(Harriet Jacobs: A Life)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Harriet Jacobs: A Life by Jean Fagan Yellin. New York: BasicCivitas Books, 2004, 394 pp., $27.50 hardcover. Fittingly, the Project on the History of Black Writing marked its 20th anniversary on October 1, 2004, with a lecture by Jean Fagan...

Women of the right.(Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles)(Home-Grown Hate: Gender and Organized Racism)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles by Julie Ingersoll. New York: New York University Press, 2003, 181 pp., $18.00 paper. Home-Grown Hate: Gender and Organized Racism edited by Abby L. Ferber. New' York:...

The myth of balance.(Competing Devotions: Career and Family Among Women Executives)(The Time Divide: Work, Family and Gender Inequality)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Competing Devotions: Career and Family Among Women Executives by Mary Blair-Loy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003, 269 pp., $39.95 hardcover. The Time Divide: Work, Family and Gender Inequality by Jerry A. Jacobs and Kathleen...

The bougainville rebellion.(... as Mothers of the Land: The Birth of the Bougainville Women for Peace and Freedom)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... ... as Mothers of the Land: the Birth of the Bougainville Women for Peace and Freedom edited by Josephine Tankunani Sirivi and Marilyn Taleo Havini. Canberra, ACT, Australia: Pandanus Books, 2004, 190 pp., $? paper. Bougainvilleans may...

The life and the myth.(Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde)(Conversations with Audre Lorde)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde by Alexis De Veaux. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, 512 pp., $29.95 hardcover. Conversations with Audre Lorde edited by Joan Wylie Hall. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2004,...

How we think.(The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain)(An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain by Alice Weaver Flaherty. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004, 307 pp., $24.00 hardcover, $13.00 paper. An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain by...

We Did.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
December 1, 2004... We Did I got lost and ended up taking somebody else's mp to Maine There was the dancefloor where she learned to dance-- it was raked (and had linoleum tiles) There were the Mexican jumping beans stuck between...

Dog Left at a Strange Place.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Dog Left at a Strange Place Is this my new life? The rooms all garble Everything smelling so loud No place to put my smells Their smells nowhere to be found Where are the eyes to look into? Am I...

My Mother's Chair.(Poetry)(Poem)
December 1, 2004... My Mother's Chair Coming home late, I'd let myself in with my key, tiptoe up the stairs, and there she was, in the family room, one lamp burning, reading her newspaper in her velvet-and-chrome swivel chair, as...

Ode to Utensils.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Ode to Utensils Opening the drawer, I like the old-fashioned egg beater best, green painted handle so worn and flaked the blanched wood underneath shows through. I like to see the evidence of another hand beneath my...

To Nancy Drew on Her 50th Birthday.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
December 1, 2004... To Nancy Drew on Her 50th Birthday What secret does the old clock hold now? Where does the hidden staircase lead? It's time to mount the 99 steps, accept the secret in the old attic. The clues have been there all along...

Where do you live?(Poem)(Illustration)
December 1, 2004... Where do you live? And how long have you lived there? Do you have any children? This is my mother speaking to me in a room where her grandchildren's photos cover the walls. You look tall, she says, and your hair...

Hester Speaks.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Hester Speaks 1. Listen child, to what you imagine I know to memories you do not have-- me lying beside Settindown Creek before the cotton mill's wheel began churning the water before the white man ...

Indian Reservation 1971.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Indian Reservation 1971 Great great-grandmother Hester could dance a saucer of water on her head the price of not having a price having been stolen by a God-fearing Scots Irish Georgia mountain man whose sons...

Just Home from Those Streets.(Poetry)(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Just Home from Those Streets your feet also walked where errands spring up as women approach reseeding themselves once accomplished. Towards home I cursed myself for forgetting mayo, crackers ...

Lost, So We Come Here.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Lost, So We Come Here The page, as to a lake covered in mist And cast our lines, fishing for the gone Through white cover thinking What, that experience goes under Then sends ripples from the fathoms Like script...

From a Hammock Between Aroma-Trees.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
December 1, 2004... From a Hammock Between Aroma-Trees Lie back and the air holds you strung between shore and tideline, your head towards the mountain, your feet going before you to the island. You rock unseen; aromas spread their...

Photo of a Girl 14: Merrill, Wisconsin 1925.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Photo of a Girl 14: Merrill, Wisconsin 1925 Spring wind blows her scarf but her gaze is unruffled, a moody look renowned as adolescence. She poses against a telephone pole, weight on her left leg her right...

Coral.(Poem)(Illustration)
December 1, 2004... Coral I came down for this, to hang flat as a shadow over their subtle landscape, their ferns of coral parting to let me in, my thighs grazing their mock fungus. When they see me, they scatter like...

The Moment.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
December 1, 2004... The Moment Packed in snug as stones in the wall behind them mortared by costume, twelve Irish schoolgirls wait for a Dublin bus. They're an unstable mass, grey jumpers, pink shirts can't contain them. Red cardigans...

Ice Skating.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Ice Skating Our daughter is gone now, forever, a tragedy, so we skate way far over in the distance, remotely visible, two pitiable lurchers, where the surface is wafery thin and the light is bad, where...

Tea Time.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Tea Time Losing your daughter, losing your daughter to murder, requires adjustment. Like, say, you are sipping tea and someone reaches over and fantastically yanks your heart from your chest ...

Island of Daily Life.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Island of Daily Life This one is for Sandy who loves poems about ordinary things. For her, I'll keep my abstractions to a minimum and praise the open carpentry of the summer cabins for their...

Late Butch/Femme.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
December 1, 2004... Late Butch/Femme Long accustomed to playing the butch I saw you for the femme I thought you were-- long-waisted, well-bred, the hostess who knew to fold the napkin in the wineglass. But I had not watched you square...

A modern Muslim's tale.(Madras on Rainy Days)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Madras on Rainy Days by Samina Ali. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004, 307 pp., $24.00 hardcover. Exotic on the surface, with its evocation of the traditional world of the Indian Muslim community within the walled city of old...

Iowa meditations.(Gilead)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004, 247 pp., $23.00 hardcover. Marilynne Robinson's long-awaited second novel, written in epistolary form, is an imaginary memoir by John Ames, a Congregationalist...

Publishing for the love of it: small presses are changing the world, one page at a time.
December 1, 2004... In a time when conglomerates own the old publishing houses, and books that aren't "blockbusters" disappear from bookstore shelves in months or even weeks, when feminist and other independent bookstores are dying off at an alarming rate, small...

Theory love/hate.(Skeptical Feminism: Activist Theory, Activist Practice)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Skeptical Feminism: Activist Theory, Activist Practice by Carolyn Dever. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2004, 256 pp., $18.95 paper. Skeptical Feminism is skeptical indeed. Carolyn Dever doubts the coherence of a wide...

Blue indigestion.(The Strange History of Suzanne LaFleshe and Other Stories of Women and Fatness)(Venus of Chalk)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... The Strange History of Suzanne LaFleshe and Other Stories of Women and Fatness edited by Susan Koppelman. New York: The Feminist Press, 2003, 278 pp., $16.95 paper. Venus of Chalk by Susan Stinson. Ann Arbor, MI: Firebrand Books, 2004, 204...

Less cool, more light.(Cool Men and the Second Sex)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Cool Men and the Second Sex by Susan Fraiman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, 212 pp., $24.50 paper. Many of us have wondered why; after 30 years of feminist critique, the casual disparagement of women is still tolerated...

AIDS: a crime against women.(Moving Mountains: The Race to Treat Global AIDS)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Moving Mountains: The Race to Treat Global AIDS by Anne-christine d'Adesky. New York: Verso, 2004, 487 pp., $30.00 hardcover. I was shocked out of complacency recently when I encountered a stunning figure in my morning newspaper. The...

The breast vs. the bottle.(Mother's Milk: Breastfeeding Controversies in American Culture)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Mother's Milk: breastfeeding Controversies in American Culture by Bernice L. Hausman. New York: Routledge, 2003, 274 pp., $26.95 paper. My sweetheart grew up in a small Midwestern town during the 1970s when breastfeeding was at an all time...

Sparks of light.(Because of the Light)(Buddha's Dogs)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Because of the Light by Roseann Lloyd. Duluth, MN: Holy Cow! Press, 2003, 112 pp., $13.95 paper. Buddha's Dogs by Susan Browne. New York, NY: Four Way Books, 71 pp., $14.95 paper Midway on my journey, I found myself in a dark wood,"...

The UN and women's rights.(Global Prescriptions: Gendering Health and Human Rights by Rosalind Pollack Petchesky)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Global Prescriptions: Gendering Health and Human Rights by Rosalind Pollack Petchesky. New York: Zed Books, 2003, 306 pp., $25.00 paper. The complex relationships among global health policies, sexuality, and gender roles are too often...

Building trails, finding home.(Now Go Home: Wilderness, Belonging, and the Crosscut Saw)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Now Go Home: Wilderness, Belonging, and the Crosscut Saw by Ana Maria Spagna. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2004, 168 pp., $17.95 paper. One of the most gratifying days I spent in recent years was as a volunteer helping to...

Media distortions.(Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 1963-1975)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 1963-1975 by Patricia Bradley. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2003, 322 pp., $46.00 hardcover, $18.00 paper. The second wave of the women's movement sought to use the media as...

The star-maker machinery.(Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom by Adrienne L. McLean. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004, 272 pp., $23.95 paper. Forties film Icon Rita Hayworth--born Marguerita Carmen Cansino and immortalized...