The Women's Review of Books articles from January 2006

The Women's Review of Books archives from January 2006

Editorial.
January 1, 2006... Dear Friends of Women's Review of Books, I never thought I'd be writing this letter. It's true that in the gloomy days last fall, after we at Women's Review along with our long-time host, Wellesley Centers for Women, regretfully decided...

A passion for equality.(The Solitude of Self: Thinking about Elizabeth Cady Stanton)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... The Solitude of Self: Thinking about Elizabeth Cady Stanton By Vivian Gornick New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005, 133 pp., $17.00, hardcover Occasionally a marvelous writer turns her attention to a subject who suits her...

Plot vs. character.(An Atomic Romance)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... An Atomic Romance By Bobbie Ann Mason New York: Random House, 2005, 266 pages, $24.95, hardcover For the last decade I have been involved in one of those odd arguments that perhaps only novelists have. It developed as I talked to...

The incomparable Lady Day.(With Billie)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... With Billie By Julia Blackburn New York; Pantheon, 2005, 354 pp., $25.00, hardcover Julia Blackburn's With Billie offers new insight into Billie Holiday's familiar tale: the young girl born to teenaged parents comes of age in...

Other orders of intimacy.(Eudora Welty: A Biography)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Eudora Welty: A Biography by Suzanne Marrs New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2005, 638 pp., $28.00, hardcover How do you write the biography of a woman who has publicly said: "I've always been tenacious in my feeling that we don't need to...

Living the undead life.(Fledgling, The Historian)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Fledgling Octavia E. Butler New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005, 320 pp., $24.95, hardcover The Historian Elizabeth Kostova New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005, 642 pp., $25.95, hardcover According to legend, it is vampires who...

Doha Boraki Moroccan Feminist, Translator, Novelist.(Chemseddoha Boraki)(Interview)
January 1, 2006... For Moroccan women, life looks promising. As of 2004, the country has a new family code--one of the most liberal in the Arab world-that establishes equality of the sexes in matters of marriage and divorce, severely restricts polygamy, and...

Field notes.(views on poetry world )(Column)
January 1, 2006... In this new column, Women's Review of Books poetry and contributing editor Robin Becker provides news and commentary on poetry and the poetry world. When poets and editors choose work for a volume of new and selected poems, they seek, out...

Suite for Eleanor.(POETRY)(Poem)
January 1, 2006... When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it? --Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884-1962 i The Mountain Difficult to say what the supreme Moment is in the life of a mountain,...

On reading the age of innocence in the year 2005.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... I read this curious Victorian novel in the suspended bliss of a mid-July night. Moths storm the screen longing to immolate themselves, plaster their frail dust against the single bulb. But even they do not distract my attention from his pure...

First thing in the morning.(electronic toy)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... First thing in the morning the hooded man comes back to me frozen in terror atop his box. I take him with me over my cereal and juice. Why must thou obsess? the godhead thunders. Am I not a god of far-off? Permit this poor benighted bastard to...

Waterboarding.(Poem)
January 1, 2006... Waterboarding You're thinking summer, theme parks, a giant plastic slide turquoise and pink, water streaming along its sinuous course and clots of screaming children pouring down cooled as the ice in your evening...

Pulp and circumstance.(pulp fiction)
January 1, 2006... Early in 1966, when we were both fifteen, my girlfriend and I found a lesbian pulp paperback, We, Too, Must Love, on the bookshelf of another Senior Girl Scout. We "borrowed" it, devoured it, and returned it before its absence would be noticed....

The double vision of Karen Davis.(photography)
January 1, 2006... The duality of Karen Davis's gaze is brought together in her images. Ever the realist, Davis's work is grounded in the documentary tradition; she is a restless explorer of far-reaching subjects. Along with the direct gaze of the realist, we...

On my bookshelf.(cartoon life)
January 1, 2006... Women's Review writers and readers let us know what they're reading in their spare time. Having just read several heavily documented condemnations of US journalism (The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers,...

All things Peabody.(The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism Megan Marshall Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005, 602 pp., $28.00, hardcover Peabody is a familiar name here in Boston. As a child I attended the Peabody...

Catching Courage.(Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison Kathy Kelly Oakland, CA: CounterPunch, 2005, 173 pp., $14.95, paperback Kathy Kelly exemplifies a powerful model of dissent, rooted in an American tradition of nonviolent civil...

A woman of ordinary splendor.(Watercolor Women, Opaque Men: A Novel in Verse)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... Watercolor Women, Opaque Men: A Novel in Verse By Ana Castillo Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 2005, 269 pp., $15.00, paperback During the past thirty years, Ana Castillo has published four novels, five books of poetry, one short...

Finding Afghanistan.(A Bed of Red Afghanistan)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... A Bed of Red Afghanistan By Nelofer Pazira New York: Free Press, 2005, 408 pp., $15.00, paperback In 1978, five-year-old Nelofer Pazira was marched to a prison in Kabul to visit her father, a prominent physician and one of...

Why you'll never hear, "heeeeeeere's Katey!".('The Aristocrats')
January 1, 2006... When I was ten years old, I begged to stay up to watch the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. My father said that I was too young. I reasoned with him that when I was old enough to watch, I'd be too tired. My argument won me a one-time-only,...

Love and marriage (or not).(The New Single Woman)(Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage)(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... The New Single Woman By E. Kay Trimberger Boston: Beacon Press, 2005, 265 pp., $25.95, hardcover Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage By Stephanie Coontz New York: Viking, 2005,...