The Women's Review of Books articles from January 2004

The Women's Review of Books archives from January 2004

Beyond the controversy.(Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress edited by Ian Berry, Darby English, Vivian Patterson, and Mark Reinhardt. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003, 205 pp., $45.00 hardcover. Born in 1969, Kara Walker is by all accounts one of the most...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... Dear Editor: In your November 2003 issue, you published a review of Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left which asserted that "As two policemen approached, Kathy Boudin wiggled out of the passenger seat, shouting 'Tell...

In memoriam: Monique Wittig: a tribute to the innovative philosopher/poet/novelist who died in January 2003.(Obituary)
January 1, 2004... A year has passed since we lost a dear friend and colleague, and the world lost one of its greatest writers and thinkers, Monique Wittig. She went for a walk in her beloved Sabino Canyon on that sunny winter day, and I can hear her talking with...

The ORP man.(Murder and the Reasonable Man: Passion and Fear in the Criminal Courtroom)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Murder and the Reasonable Man: Passion and Fear in the Criminal Courtroom by Cynthia Lee. New York: New York University Press, 2003, 371 pp., $37.95 hardcover. In 1933, Pearl Reed noticed that her husband, Bubba, was missing from a church...

Welfare family values.(Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx; Flat Broke With Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. New York: Scribner, 2003, 416 pp., $25.00 hardcover. Flat Broke With Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform by Sharon Hays. New York:...

Looking for Sappho.(3 books on Sappho)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Sappho's Leap by Erica Jong. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003, 320 pp., $24.95 hardcover. The Sappho History by Margaret Reynolds. New York: Palgrave/MacMillan, 2003, 311 pp., $27.95 paper. If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Anne...

Rethinking Helen Keller.(2 books on Helen Keller)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... The Story of My Life by Helen Keller, edited by Roger Shattuck with Dorothy Herrmann. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003, 471 pp., $21.95 hardcover. The Story of My Life by Helen Keller, edited by James Berger. New York: Modern Library, 2003,...

Nannies around the world.(Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy; We Are Not Babysitters: Family Child Care Providers Redefine Work and Care)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002, 328 pp., $26.00 hardcover We Are Not Babysitters: Family Child Care Providers...

Old bags, unite!(Learning to be Old: Gender, Culture, and Aging )(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Learning to be Old: Gender, Culture, and Aging by Margaret Cruikshank. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003, 243 pp., $22.95 paper. You old bag!" The businessman rushing at me from Park Avenue, along the wrong half of a midtown...

Reversing stereotypes.(What Answer?)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... What Answer? by Anna E. Dickinson, edited by J. Matthew Gallman. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2003, 315 pp., $18.00 paper. The Women's Review of Books editor who invited me to review What Answer? identified Anna E. Dickinson in her e-mall...

Love among anthropologists.(Intertwined Lives: Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Their Circle)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Intertwined Lives: Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Their Circle by Lois W. Banner. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003, 524 pp., $30.00 hardcover. Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead met in the introductory course in anthropology at Barnard...

The Secret.(Poetry)(Poem)
January 1, 2004... The Secret London, 1980 It wasn't the inside of the book I loved: the princesses in matching dresses, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, their docile dogs--not them but the scarred cloth cover, singed edge where...

To dive.(Poetry)(Poem)
January 1, 2004... To Dive At eleven, I must have known what it was, must have seen pictures in Science, like pictures of red deserts in far-off countries. And I must have known how to name it, the way I could name those mornings ...

Navigating poetic traditions.(3 books on poetry)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Becoming Ebony by Patricia Jabbeh Wesley. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003, 79 pp., paper. Swimming with Dolphins by Adrian Oktenberg. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2002, 105 pp., $19.95 hardcover. I...

Goddesses of power.(3 books on religion and gender)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Kiss of the Yogini: "Tantric Sex" in its South Asian Context by David Gordon White. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003, 360 pp., $43.00 hardcover. Power of Denial: Buddhism, Purity, and Gender by Bernard Faure. Princeton, NJ:...

The Bookshelf.(Bibliography)
January 1, 2004... Attentive readers will note that we now have a new format for the Bookshelf, which aims to provide you with a little more information than in the past about books we've received in our office recently. As always, the Bookshelf is only a partial...