The Women's Review of Books articles from January 2009

The Women's Review of Books archives from January 2009

We agree.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... I am grateful to Diana Postlethwaite for her thoughtful review of my new memoir, To Love What Is: A Marriage Transformed (WRB November/December 2008). It's rare that a review delivers such a serious retrospective, placing the author's new book...

Rape and Holocaust denial.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... I take strong exception to a comment made by Jody Raphael in her review "Rape Culture" (WRB, November / December 2008). Raphael writes, "The current practice of denying rape statistics and rape reports must become as unacceptable as Holocaust...

Where are the women?(Women for President: Media Bias in Eight Campaigns)(Book review)
January 1, 2009... Women for President: Media Bias in Eight Campaigns By Erika Folk Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008, 171 pp., $19.95, paperback [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Why hasn't the United States elected a female...

The practice and the theory.(Radical Sisters: Second-Wave Feminism and Black Liberation in Washington, D.C.)(Book review)
January 1, 2009... Radical Sisters: Second-Wave Feminism and Black Liberation in Washington, DC By Anne M. Valk Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008, 253 pp., $40.00, hardcover [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Anne M. Valk's Radical...

Bridging the chasm.(The Bishop's Daughter: A Memoir)(Book review)
January 1, 2009... The Bishop's Daughter: A Memoir By Honor Moore New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008, 352 pp., $25.95, paperback "My father always wanted me to write about him," says Honor Moore, explaining that as soon as she set down...

The haunted room.(Essay)(Viewpoint essay)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Give her another hundred years, a room... of her own and five hundred a year," wrote Virginia Woolf in 1929, of the woman novelist. "[L]et her speak her mind... and she will write a better book one of these days....

An unbalanced and impossible relationship.(White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson)(Book review)
January 1, 2009... White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson By Brenda Wineapple New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008, 388 pp., hardcover, $27.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As perhaps the most famous recluse in American...

A radical activist, rediscovered.(Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones)(Book review)
January 1, 2009... Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones By Carole Boyce Davies Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008, 311 pp., $22.95, paperback As someone who has long been interested in the life and work of...

Defamiliarize yourself.('The Halo Rule', 'Sister', 'Ordinary Beans', 'Bonneville' and 'The Gravity Soundtrack')(Book review)
January 1, 2009... The Halo Rule By Teresa Leo Denver, CO: Elixir Press, 2008, 70 pp., $16.00, paperback Sister By Nickole Brown Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 2007, 111 pp., $18.95, paperback Ordinary Beans By Gwyn McVay San...

Fly Me to the Moon.(Poetry)(Poem)
January 1, 2009... Fly Me to the Moon Take me to zero gravity, the weightlessness of space. Would I be myself, gone orbital? Low Earth, high Earth, geosynchronos: I'd drift there in a bubble all air-locked, walking on air-- ...

Heights and Depths.(Poetry)(Poem)
January 1, 2009... Heights and Depths The air was all salt fog, cool for July. We locked our bikes to a split rail fence, then set out on foot--a half mile along the breakwater to Wood End Light. We passed several others climbing up...

The benefits of hindsight.(Good reads)('Telex from Cuba', 'The Size of the World' and 'Our Lady of the Artichokes')(Book review)
January 1, 2009... Telex from Cuba By Rachel Kushner New York: Scribner, 2008, 322 pp., $25.00, hardcover The Size of the World By Joan Silber New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008, 320 pp., $23.95, hardcover Our Lady of the Artichokes...

In the tradition of women redefining the world: notes on Al Sol, photographs from Mexico, Cameroon, and Nicaragua by Stella Johnson.(Photography)
January 1, 2009... If fit can be said that a good story continues off the page then a photograph can extend beyond the frame. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] But if it is also true that humans transpose interior landscape for exterior, then the act of looking at...

Of her time and ahead of it.(Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeannette Howard Foster)(Book review)
January 1, 2009... Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeannette Howard Foster By Joanne Passet Cambridge, MA: DaCapo Press, 2008, 368 pp., $27.50, hardcover [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For bookish lesbians of a certain age, librarian Jeannette Foster's...

Founding mothers.('Prodigal Daughters: Susanna Rowson's Early American Women' and 'The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation')(Book review)
January 1, 2009... Prodigal Daughters: Susanna Rowson's Early American Women By Marion Rust Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2008, 311 pp., $24.95, paperback The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding...

Short and frisky.('Dinner with Osama', 'Downriver: Short Stories' and 'Remember Love')(Book review)
January 1, 2009... Dinner with Osama By Marilyn Krysl Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008, 194 pp., $20.00, paperback Downriver: Short Stories By Jeanne M. Leiby Durham, NC: Caroline Wren Press, 2008, 161 pp., $14.95,...

A dialogue of the sources.(Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections)(Book review)
January 1, 2009... Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections Edited by Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2008, 330 pp., $24.95, paperback [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In Joanna Russ's slim but classic...

The second-best bed and other conundrums.(Book review)
January 1, 2009... Shakespeare's Wife By Germaine Greer New York: HarperCollins, 2008, 416 pp., $26.95, hardcover [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the 1960s, seventies, and eighties, feminist writers attacked many false assumptions that were deeply...

Woman's best friend.('The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics' and 'When Species Meet')(Book review)
January 1, 2009... The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics Edited by Josephine Donovan and Carol J. Adams New York: Columbia University Press, 2007, 392 pp., $24.50, paperback When Species Meet By Donna J. Haraway Minneapolis:...