The Women's Review of Books articles from July 2002

The Women's Review of Books archives from July 2002

Letters.
July 1, 2002... To the Editors: I've run across something in the May 2002 issue of the Women's Review--a single word, really!--that tripped me up. The word is "curiously," and it occurs ii Helena Goscilo's excellent review of Nihilist Girl, by Sofia...

I choose the Poet's life: Maxine Hong Kingston invites the muse. (Women Writing the Asian Diaspora).(Excerpt)
July 1, 2002... In the pages that follow, we present a gallery of new and forthcoming work by writers hailing from Singapore and San Francisco, Manila and Vancouver, Brooklyn and Saigon, and points between and beyond--first- and second-generation women,...

From warrior to poet: Maxine Hong Kingston talks to Lori Tsang about her latest book.(Interview)
July 1, 2002... Lori Tsang writes: The works of Maxine Hong Kingston have been critically acclaimed and reviled, and have ended up on many a college syllabus. From The Woman Warrior, written in the voice of a female protagonist, to China Men, written in...

Growing up confused: for a Bengali Muslim girl, life is full of contradictions.(Excerpt)
July 1, 2002... Unlike the other writers whose work is featured in this issue, Taslima Nasrin left her native country as a direct result of political-religious persecution. In 1993 the publication of her novel Shame (Lajja), which depicts Muslim persecution...

Two Poems.(Poem)
July 1, 2002... Meena Alexander Red Parapet Sister, you live in a very private place an extremity of sense. I watch you in mother's garden. Plucking jasmine petals you set them in your palm and how they burn. A rat indigo with rain...

Illiterate Heart: where translations perish.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Frankenstein, feeling disoriented and displaced, exclaims after arriving at Mont Blanc's summit: " Dear Mountains! My own beautiful lake! How do you welcome 'your wanderer?" I am reminded of the work of Meena...

The plates of wrath: at a Korean dinner-party, food becomes a lethal weapon.(Excerpt)
July 1, 2002... We took a cab to Koreatown, a rundown patch of mostly wholesale stores anchored, surprisingly, by the Empire State Building. When I first saw the American landmark, I took it for an imposter like all the fake Gucci and Fendi bags in the...

Fairytale princesses.(Desirable Daughters)
July 1, 2002... Desirable Daughters by Bharati Mukherjee. New York: Hyperion/Theia, 2002, 310 pp., $24.95 hardcover. Tam Bhattacharjee, the heroine/narrator of Desirable Daughters, is a bit of an Indian princess. When a strange young man shows up at her...

Decoding the language: Bharati Mukherjee tells Suzanne Ruta some of the stories behind Desirable Daughters.(Interview)
July 1, 2002... SR: Desirable Daughters is a novel about three sisters. The two older sisters are remarkable women, beautiful and courageous each in their way, but they lead largely unexamined lives. Tara, the third of them, is examining her life as she...

Butterflies and cherry blossoms: in search of the first Asian American woman writer.
July 1, 2002... Just over a hundred years ago, Winnifred Eaton, writing under the pseudonym Onoto Watanna, became the first Asian American to publish a novel in English. Jean Lee Cole's new Study of Eaton illustrates the ways in which her work and her...

The poetics of estrangement.(Translating Mo'um)
July 1, 2002... Translating Mo'um by Cathy Park Hong. Brooklyn, NY: Hanging Loose Press, 2002, 74 pp., $13.00 paper. It's difficult to know where to start the discussion of Cathy Park Hong's prickly, dazzling first collection. Should one say what the...

Slipping and sliding.(interview with Cathy Park Hong about politics of language)(Interview)
July 1, 2002... Cathy Park Hong talks to the Women's Review about the politics of language. WROB: Can you say a bit about your linguistic history-were you born in Korea? did you grow up speaking Korean or English or both? did you as a child or later...

Cross-cultural creatures: Hiromi Goto brings magic into everyday life.(novel 'The Kappa Child')(Interview)
July 1, 2002... Japanese Canadian Hiromi Goto's novel The Kappa Child was chosen to receive the 2001 James Tiptree Jr. Award this past April. Announcing the award, jury members wrote: The Kappa Child is a delightful, wholly original book, a...

Birthing the kappa child: of sisters, shopping carts and cucumbers.(from 'The Kappa Child')(Excerpt)(Fiction)
July 1, 2002... Dad had no idea how to grow Japanese rice. He had no idea how to grow anything at all. We had lived in a poor area of Osaka, where the eternal roar of subway trains lulled Slither and me to sleep and where Dad was a nighttime parking...

Spider: life after 1975; after Galway Kinnell.(Poem)
July 1, 2002... spider: life after 1975 after Galway Kinnell 1 Plumped with portions of mosquitoes and flies, eaters of our blood and shit, the spider grabs its prey with its tarsi. With its fangs, tears into it, ingests our refuse...

Ventriloquist.(Poem)
July 1, 2002... Mong-Lan ventriloquist what is there in this pungent darkness? notes drying on shelves hollow mandolin pinch of salt like stars there is no...

In the city of lionesses.
July 1, 2002... This Place Called Absence by Lydia Kwa. New York: Kensington Books, 2002, 218 pp., $23.00 hardcover. Shadow Theatre by Fiona Cheong. New York: Soho Press, 2002, 24O pp., $24.00 hardcover. Joss and Gold by Shirley Geok-lin Lim. ...

Singapore on my mind: Fiona Cheong, Lydia Kwa and Shirley Geok-lin Lim compare notes.(Panel Discussion)
July 1, 2002... The Women's Review recently convened a discussion between the three novelists whose work is reviewed here by Indira Karamcheti. WROB: Can you each start by describing how you see your novels? Fiona: Shadow Theatre is about a Eurasian...

Perpetual motion: in Manila, New York and points between, home is always somewhere else.(Philippines)
July 1, 2002... Homesick Blame it on the mambo and the cha-cha, voodoo amulets worn on the same chain with tiny crucifixes and scapulars blessed by the Pope. Chains of love, medals engraved with the all-seeing Eye, ascending Blessed Virgins floating...

Not your mother's diaspora: voices of the Asian American avant-garde.(Summi Kaipa, editor of journal Interlope)(Interview)
July 1, 2002... Poets Summi Kaipa and Prageeta Sharma presented a panel at the Associated Writing Programs conference in New Orleans this spring, entitled "South Asian Women Artists Writing Communities." At that panel, Summi Kaipa described the experience of...

From the Wolfgirls of Midnapure.(from Interlope #7)(Excerpt)(Reprint)(Fiction)
July 1, 2002... February 1921 I cannot begin and will not. -- A "mother." Though my blood echoes, is clotted, with these two bare girls. Hardly, I say to other women who exit with similar. They: so passionate about their boys, distributing sugar. My...

The price of heroism.
July 1, 2002... Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country by Gillian Slovo. New York: Abacus, 2002, 282 PP., $13.95 paper. Red Dust: A Novel by Gillian Slovo. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002, 340 pp., $25.95 hardcover. South Africa still looms large in...

Enough is enough.
July 1, 2002... Epicurean Simplicity by Stephanie Mills. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2002, 190 pp., $22.00 hardcover. Bonelight: Ruin and Grace in the New Southwest by Mary Sojourner. Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 2002, 184 pp., $21.95...

Meetings of minds.
July 1, 2002... Maps of Women's Goings and Stayings by Rela Mazali. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001, 382 pp., $60.00 hardcover, $24.95 paper. Maps of Women's Goings and Stayings crosses genres and geography, defying classification as...

Inside the talking house.(Brief Article)(Interview)
July 1, 2002... In a recent conversation by telephone, Ruth Linden asked Rela Mazali to explain some of the key elements of Maps of Women's Goings and Stayings. RRL: I wonder if you could talk about how the notion of the talking house emerged, and the...

In the belly of the beast.
July 1, 2002... Moral Hazard by Kate Jennings. New York: HarperCollins, 2002, 175 pp., $21.95 hardcover. Three-quarters into Moral Hazard, Kate Jennings' hilarious and horrific tale of 1990s Wall Street, the soul-sucking turns literal. Mike, a risk...

Incandescent clarity.
July 1, 2002... the volcano sequence by Alicia Suskin Ostriker. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002, 123 pp., $12.95 paper. Fox, Poems 1998-2000 by Adrienne Rich. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001, 64 pp., $21.00 hardcover. Alicia Ostriker...

Down-home dissident.
July 1, 2002... Small Wonder: Essays by Barbara Kingsolver. New York: HarperCollins, 2002, 267 pp., $23.95 hardcover. The seemingly ever-right-ward swing of politics in the United States is attributable to many factors, among which rhetoric plays no...

In the clutches of the past.
July 1, 2002... Bad Blood by Lorna Sage. New York: William Morrow, 2002, 281 pp., $24.95 hardcover. A House Unlocked by Penelope Lively. New York: Grove, 2002, 240 pp., $23.00 hardcover. Critics and novelists regularly bemoan the strangulation of...

Exploring the storyscape.
July 1, 2002... Sitting Up With the Dead: A Storied Journey Through the American South by Pamela Petro. New York: Arcade, 2002, 414 pp., $25.95 hardcover. Give me my tail!" bellows a fearsome creature who haunts many a traditional Southern story. The...

Culture mulchers.
July 1, 2002... Inappropriate Behavior: Prada Sucks! and Other Demented Descants edited by Jessica Berens and Kern Sharp. London, UK: Serpent's Tail, 2002, 273 pp., $15.00 paper. Super-successful businesswomen flick their Pantene-glossy hair about...

Unreliable narrator.
July 1, 2002... Love Works Like This: Opening One's Life to a Child by Lauren Slater. New York: Random House, 2002, 224 pp., $21.95 hardcover. Lauren Slater is the author of four memoirs: Welcome to My Country: A Therapist's Memoir of Madness (1996),...

Science for art's sake.
July 1, 2002... In Nature's Name: An Anthology of Women's Writing and Illustrations, 1780-1930 edited by Barbara T. Gates. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002, 673 pp., $27.50 paper. American Women of Letters and the Nineteenth-Century Sciences:...

Translating Michin'yun.(Poem)
July 1, 2002... Translating Michin'yun Gorgon, lost hysteric. Marsupial men in blue tiaras. She picked off the last flakes of herself: organs, crumbs, inflatable trousers. Drinking rice wine along the Han River, we talked about this sexual...