The Women's Review of Books articles from July 2000

The Women's Review of Books archives from July 2000

Election 2000: what's in it for us?
July 1, 2000... Behind the hype and fluff, does either candidate offer anything to women? Feminists have been talking about the electoral gender gap since the early 1980s, but DC's power-brokers have finally caught on: in contemporary American politics, a...

In the corridors of power.(Interview)
July 1, 2000... Lissa Muscatine talks about life as Press Secretary to the First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton is one of the most visible and scrutinized people, male or female, in the US political arena, especially now as she campaigns for the Senate...

Safe and legal--for how long?
July 1, 2000... A fundamental woman's right is at stake in the 2000 presidential election Summer 2000. The nation's major political parties have narrowed the field of presidential candidates to two men. We know their positions on reproductive rights for...

Living a revolution.
July 1, 2000... Personal reflections on a political life In the interests of full disclosure, I must confess to a peculiar frailty before launching into a tribute to the joys of politics. An onlooker could put together a compelling case that. I have...

Reasonable doubts.(Interview)
July 1, 2000... Katha Pollitt reflects on the media, the candidates and what women stand to gain next November One of the few places to find serious, non-doctrinaire discussion of women 's political, social, economic and cultural concerns is Katha...

Visibility actions.(Review)
July 1, 2000... This Is What Lesbian Looks Like: Dyke Activists Take On the 21st Century edited by Kris Kleindienst. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1999, 278 pp., $18.95 paper. This Is What Lesbian Looks Like is a smart and accessible set of theoretical...

A house is not a home.(Review)
July 1, 2000... A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics by Jo Freeman. New York: Routledge, 2000, 368 pp., $35.00 hardcover. I still remember exactly when I heard that the Democratic National Convention had nominated Geraldine Ferraro for the...

From pipe dreams to pipelines.
July 1, 2000... Marie Wilson of the White House Project has a plan to change the world Before launching the White House Project, Marie Wilson was probably best known at the initiator of Take Our Daughters to Work Day. Wilson, who heads the Ms. Foundation...

Courting disaster.
July 1, 2000... How a quiet earthquake is destroying our rights A comment from professor Judith Resnik of Yale Law School made me nervous. Speaking of the Supreme Court's ruling that threw out a key part of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) this May,...

An agenda for the 21st century.(Interview)
July 1, 2000... Eleanor Smeal outlines the visionary proposals of the National Women's Equality Act Although during this election season it seems you rarely bear candidates address what woman really want, Eleanor Smeal, president of The Feminist Majority,...

You've come which way, baby?
July 1, 2000... The road that leads from June Cleaver to Ally McBeal looks a lot like a U-turn In an undergraduate course a friend of mine teaches, she asked the class what, if any, newspapers they read regularly. A young man raised his hand and said, "I...

Woman of the century.
July 1, 2000... Eleanor Roosevelt's biographer assesses the legacy of a First Lady who sought justice for all Eleanor Roosevelt left us a great legacy. Above all, she believed that government had only one purpose: to make life better for all people. But,...

Rainbow's end.(Review)
July 1, 2000... Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland by Gerald Clarke. New York: Random House, 2000, 492 pp., $29.95 hardcover. When Judy Garland was a klutzy teenager with a breathtaking big voice, she recorded a song called "In-Between" that I, a klutzy...

Domestic dramas.(Review)
July 1, 2000... Motherkind by Jayne Anne Phillips. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, 292 pp., $24.00 hardcover. It may mark an excessive surrender to the anonymous mind-suckers who inhabit the internet these days to give any credit to the amateur...

Going public.(Review)
July 1, 2000... Eve Ensler's play The Vagina Monologues has been touring the country: Rachel Kranz went to see its New York-incarnation It's scary saying the word. "Vagina." At first it feels like you're crashing through an invisible wall. "Vagina." You...

Coal dust and moonshine.(Review)
July 1, 2000... Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven by Karen Salyer McElmurray. Athens, GA: Hill Street Press, 1999, 288 pp., $25.00 hardcover. I recently saw a "Bookend" section of the New York Times Book Review called "Two Things That Depress Me When I...

Details, details.(Review)
July 1, 2000... Vendettas, Charms, and Prayers by Pamela Gemin. Minneapolis, MN: New Rivers Press, 2000, 79 pp., $13.95 paper. The Way In by Robin Chapman. Huntington Beach, CA: Tebot Bach Press, 1999, 76 pp., $12.00 paper. World As Dictionary...

A hive of queen bees.(Review)
July 1, 2000... Partisans: Marriage, Politics, and Betrayal Among the New York Intellectuals by David Laskin. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000, 319 pp., $26.00 hardcover. Typing. There is perhaps no better touchstone for the break in social arrangements...

Lower education.(Review)
July 1, 2000... Blue Angel by Francine Prose: New York: HarperCollins, 2000, 314 pp., $25.00 hardcover. As in her recent essays on popular culture for women and on the caliber of reading material in the high school curriculum, Francine Prose is very much...

Made in Italy.(Review)
July 1, 2000... Images and Shadows: Part of a Life by Iris Origo. Boston: David R. Godine, 1999 (first published 1970), 276 pp., $15.95 paper. An Umbrian War by Romana Petri, translated by Sharon Wood. London, UK: The Toby Press, 2000, 253 pp., $15.95 paper....

Out in the outback.
July 1, 2000... In which a chance discovery in New York leads to a literary pilgrimage to Australia It's 1989, and the St. Mark's Bookshop, a beloved independent bookstore in New York City's East Village, has announced a dire-straits, crisis-averting book...

Activism lite.(Review)
July 1, 2000... Leaps of Faith by Rachel Kranz. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2000; 565 pp., $25.00 hardcover. Rosie Zombrowski, a thirtysomething union organizer, leads the clerical employees of a large Manhattan university in a tough contract...

Happy ever after?(Review)
July 1, 2000... Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding. New York: Viking, 2000, 338 pp., $24.95 hardcover. Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, published in 1996, waved goodbye to the twentieth century; Bridget Jones: The Edge of...

Eating bitterness.(Review)
July 1, 2000... A Hot January: Poems 1996-1999 by Robin Morgan. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999, 79 pp., $22.50 hardcover. For those of us who have followed her career these past 30 to 35 years, Robin Morgan has seemed the quintessential activist, the leader...

Living a lie.(Review)
July 1, 2000... Blonde by Joyce Carol Gates. New York: The Ecco Press, 2000, 738 pp., $27.50 hardcover. WE know this story all too well, in its tabloid, documentary cinematic and even feminist versions: Norma Jean Baker grows up in an orphanage and foster...

Small is beautiful.(Review)
July 1, 2000... Some Things That Stay by Sarah Willis. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000, 275 pp., $24.00 hardcover. There's a small corner of contemporary literature occupied by what might be categorized as Novels of Peculiar Experience. The...

Poetry, politics and passion.
July 1, 2000... By Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry edited by Molly McQuade. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2000, 425 pp., $16.00 paper. Dancing at the Devil's Party: Essays on Poetry, Politics, and the Erotic by Alicia Suskin Ostriker. Ann Arbor, MI:...

Mystery woman.(Review)
July 1, 2000... Blanche Passes Go by Barbara Neely. New York: Viking, 2000, 272 pp., $22.95 hardcover. When Blanche White strode upon the mystery scene in Blanche on the Lam in 1992, she was unique: an African American woman of forty, a size sixteen, with...

Boston uncommon.(Review)
July 1, 2000... Rain Line by Anne Whitney Pierce. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2000, 361 pp., $24.95 hardcover. Accidental death, unexpected birth, madness and social class transgression all figure in this fine first novel. The...

Histories of the world.(Review)
July 1, 2000... Indian Cartography by Deborah Miranda. Greenfield, NY: Greenfield Review Press, 1999, 84 PP., $12.95 paper. From the Belly of My Beauty by Esther G. Belin. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999, 85 pp., $14.95 paper. Blue Marrow by...

Witness to a century.(Review)
July 1, 2000... Selected Letters of Rebecca West edited by Bonnie Kime Scott. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000, 483 pp., $35.00 hardcover. Born Cicely Isabel Fairfield in 1892, Rebecca West died in 1983. Of the approximately 10,000 letters she...

The Seal.(Poem)
July 1, 2000... At some time, when we meet-- not on greeting or parting-- you place your hand on my upper arm, a circlet Light, warmed like beaten copper or gold I barely feel, yet feel it as an honor. I think Someone did...

The Twin.(Poem)
July 1, 2000... No more alike than flesh and glass--my left eye becomes her right; if I lean over water and my right eye's glass, it falls in the anxious pool of her left- Why should I answer for anything she does? And yet she's...