The Women's Review of Books articles from January 2007

The Women's Review of Books archives from January 2007

Get it right.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... I must correct the error in the first sentence of Suzanne Gardinier's review of The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser (July/August). Princip killed an archduke (and his duchess), not an emperor. This isn't exactly an obscure bit of history....

The father, the daughter.(Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic By Alison Bechdel Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006, 232 pp., $19.95, hardcover As I sat down to write about Alison Bechdel's amazing graphic novel Fun Home, I was disturbed by a phone call that...

Mourning isn't what it used to be.(Death's Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Death's Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve By Sandra Gilbert New York and London: Norton, 2006, 580 pp., $29.95, hardcover I have been lucky. All my grandparents died at appropriate ages from common causes. Although I have too many...

The workaday world.(Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace By Nancy MacLean Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006, 454 pp., $35.00, hardcover In most novels, the workplace is--like the bathroom--conspicuous by its absence....

Who's minding the kids?(Forgotten Families: Ending the Growing Crisis Confronting Children and Working Parents in the Global Economy)(Unsung Heroines: Single Mothers and the American Dream)(Single Mother: The Emergence of the Domestic Intellectual)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Forgotten Families: Ending the Growing Crisis Confronting Children and Working Parents in the Global Economy By Jody Heymann New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, 306 pp., $27.50, hardcover Unsung Heroines: Single Mothers and the...

Mysteries! The solid earth!(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life By Arlene Blum New York: Scribner, 2005, 313 pp., $27.50, hardcover On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica By Gretchen Legler Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2005, 195...

If it weren't for her hair.(a troubled memoir)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Secret Daughter: A Mixed-Race Daughter and the Mother Who Gave Her Away By June Cross New York: Viking, 2006, 304 pp., $24.95, hardcover If you are acquainted with Danzy Senna's Caucasia (1999), Rebecca Walker's Black, White, and Jewish...

Marian Roth: the photography of chance.(Photography)
January 1, 2007... We live in a small town, so it is not uncommon to come across Roth at, for instance, the beach, sitting companionably next to a large metal trashcan as if she and the trashcan are (which, given that the can is a pinhole camera, they are). moves...

What it is to be human.(Book review)
January 1, 2007... A Million Nightingales By Susan Straight New York: Pantheon Books, 2006, 333 pp., $24.95, hardcover Hydroplane By Susan Steinberg Tallahassee, FL: Fiction Collective Two, 2006, 204 pp., $15.95, paperback The Secret River By Kate...

Mobius stripping.(a researh on exotic dancers)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Stripped: Inside the Lives of Exotic Dancers By Bernadette Barton New York: New York University Press, 2006, 195 pp., $20.00, paperback When Bernadette Barton, a lesbian sociologist and women's studies scholar, walked into strip clubs and...

Deconstructing the chicken.(legacies of black women)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food and Power By Psyche A. Williams-Forson Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006, 336 pp., $19.95 paperback If you cringe every time you see an African American family in a...

The suck, slop, and bliss.(What If Your Mother)(Daughter Of)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... What If Your Mother By Judith Arcana Goshen, CT: Chicory Blue Press, 2005, 90 pp., $15.00, paperback Daughter Of By Kathleen Aguero San Diego, CA: Cedar Hill Books, 2005, 110 pp., $18.00, hardcover Judith Arcana's What If Your Mother...

The language without a name.(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Ministry of Pain By Dubravka Ugresic Translated by Michael Henry Heim New York: Ecco/Harper Collins, 2006, 272 pp., $22.95, hardcover Twenty years ago, the countries of Eastern Europe were self-contained and cut off, like leather pouches...

Curing gender amnesia.(Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence)(Martha Washington: An American Life)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence By Carol Berkin New York: Knopf, 2005, 224 pp., $24.00, hardcover Martha Washington: An American Life By Patricia Brady New York: Viking, 2005, 276 pp., $24.95,...

Yeah, baby.(Murder in Byzantium: A Novel)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... Murder in Byzantium: A Novel By Julia Kristeva Translated by C. Jon Delogu London and New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, 249 pp., $29.50, hardcover Murder in Byzantium is Julia Kristeva's second mystery novel featuring the...

The post-communist world.(The Third Shore: Women's Fiction from East Central Europe)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... The Third Shore: Women's Fiction from East Central Europe Edited by Agata Schwartz and Luise von Flotow Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006, 245 pp., $19.95, paperback The first story I read in The Third Shore confirmed my...

Landscapes and interiors.(A Map of Glass)(Sylvanus Now )(Book review)
January 1, 2007... A Map of Glass By Jane Urquhart San Francisco: MacAdam/Cage Publishing, 2006, 374 pp. $25, hardcover Sylvanus Now By Donna Morrissey New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006, 326 pp., $14.95, paperback At a certain point in...

Growth is the great gift: Jean Baker Miller, 1927-2006.(Obituary)(Obituary)
January 1, 2007... Psychoanalyst and author Jean Baker Miller died on July 29 at age 78, after a thirteen-year struggle with emphysema and post-polio syndrome. Miller was born on September 29, 1927, in New York City. She received a scholarship to Sarah...

The food wars.(On My Bookshelf)(Food Wars, What to Eat)(Omnivore's Dilemma)(Organic, Inc.)(Book review)
January 1, 2007... While I was writing this column, the federal Food and Drug Administration reported that 204 people in 26 states from California to New York, Canada to Virginia, had been diagnosed with E. coli O157:H7 infections traceable to Salinas Valley...