The Women's Review of Books articles from March 2004

The Women's Review of Books archives from March 2004

The elusive veil.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Veil: Veiling, Representation and Contemporary Art edited by David A. Bailey and Gilane Tawadros. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003, 187 pp., $25.00 paper. The Veil Unveiled: The Hijab in Modern Culture by Faegheh Shirazi. Gainesville,...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... Dear Editor: The death by suicide of Carolyn Heilbrun impels me both to reread her contribution to your July 2003 issue on women aging, and to complete an unfinished letter to you that I began immediately after reading that issue. Along...

Who's discovering whom?(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Dream Jungle by Jessica Hagedorn. New York: Viking, 2003, 325 pp., $23.95 hardcover. Dream Jungle is an intricate tale woven from two fictionalized events in the Philippines during the 1970s. In real life, the events the so-called...

A conversation with Jessica Hagedorn.(Interview)
March 1, 2004... Karin Aguilar-San Juan: When you saw [Manda Elizalde's] obituary in 1997, what made you think that the two stories [the lost Tasaday and the filming of Apocalypse Now] belonged together? Jessica Hagedorn: I've always been fascinated by the...

Eating locally.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Home Grown: The Case for Local Food in a Global Market by Brian Halweil. Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute, 2002, 83 pp., $9.00 paper. Local Flavors by Deborah Madison. New York: Broadway Books, 2002, 408 pp., $34.95, hardcover. ...

Names and nicknames.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003, 298 pp., $240.00 hardcover. Reflecting on the power of names as markers of identity, Jhumpa Lahiri takes the reader through the life of Gogol Ganguli, a second-generation...

Because it's there.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... No Horizon's is So Far: A Historic Journey Across Antarctica by Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, with Cheryl Dahle. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 253 pp., Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic by Jennifer Niven. New York:...

The performative and the peri-.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity By Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003, 195 pp., $18.95 paper. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot hallow this ground."...

Witch.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2004... Witch My mother said she was a witch and I believed her. She could rearrange fire with her bare hands the hissing coals like ice cubes between her fingertips. Once, drawing the paring knife along...

It's just like metaphor.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2004... It's Just Like Metaphor It's just like metaphor, I said, describing to a friend the way it feels not knowing who I am. One second, it's my sister's voice coming from my mouth as if she were a ventriloquist and...

Through the Late Imperial Drugstore.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2004... Through the Late Imperial Drugstore In proportion to expertise or its mirror-image grows suspicion. In proportion to money exchanged for the removal of organs rises fear. Or not--we talk mathematics...

Before Anesthesia.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2004... Before Anesthesia The science of unconsciousness is doubtless down cold, but where you will be when the kindly gases have filtered through your cells remains mysterious, not a question of medicine. A...

Voices from prison.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Inner Lives: Voices of African American Women in Prison by Paula C. Johnson. New York: New York University Press, 2003, 338 pp., $30.00 hardcover. Couldn't Keep It to Myself: Testimony from Our Imprisoned Sisters by Wally Lamb and the...

Media mergers and you.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: the AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future by Kara Swisher with Lisa Dickey. New York: Crown Business, 2003, 294 pp., $24.95 hardcover. The title of Kara Swisher's endlessly...

Domestic tyranny.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad. New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2003, 288 pp., $19.95 hardcover. She keeps losing sight of the billowing burka. Sky blue everywhere.... They walk on, and weave their heads...

Nostalgic for monarchy.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Farewell, My Queen: A Novel by Chantal Thomas, translated by Moishe Black. New York: George Braziller, 2003, 239 pp., $22.50 hardcover. On the cover of Farewell, My Queen, Marie-Antoinette's weeping children bury their faces in the folds of...

Rhyming romance.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Open Slowly by Kate Light. Lincoln, NE: Zoo Press, 2003, 59 pp., $14.95 paper. Open Slowly, Kate Light's second collection, is single-minded both in theme and style. In strict, rhyming poems (18 sonnets, two villanelles, and assorted other...

No winners here.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer. New York: Riverhead, 2003, 238 pp., $24.95 hardcover. ZZ Packer's debut story collector brings Kafka to mind, but no because the work can be described as Kafkaesque or even Kafka-ish. It's because...

Saving women's lives: a conversation with abortion rights activist Merle Hoffman.(Interview)
March 1, 2004... A conversation with abortion rights activist Merle Hoffman Back in December 2001, The Women's Review of Books published an interview with Merle Hoffman, an activist for reproductive fights since the early 1970s and founder of CHOICES...

Compassion heals.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Common Shock: Witnessing Violence Every Day by Kaethe Weingarten. New York: Dutton, 2003, 382 pp., $24.95 hardcover. The premise of Common Shock--that we become "compassionate witnesses" to ourselves and others as we endure the "thousand...

Ways of loving.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Curled in the Bed of Love: Stories by Catherine Brady. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2003, 232 pp., $24.95 hardcover. Blind Love by Mary Woronov. New York: Serpent's Tail, 2004, 144 pp., $14.00 paper. No title could be more...

Bonnie Adrian, Framing the Bride: Globalizing Beauty and Romance in Taiwan's Bridal Industry.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
March 1, 2004... Bonnie Adrian, Framing the Bride: Globalizing Beauty and Romance in Taiwan's Bridal Industry. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003, 297 pp., paper. A closely researched look at the cultural craze that brings Taiwan's newlyweds to...

Marjorie Agosin, ed., Gabriela Mistral: The Audacious Traveler.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
March 1, 2004... Marjorie Agosin, ed., Gabriela Mistral: The Audacious Traveler. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2003, 308 pp., paper. As the only Latin American woman to win the Nobel Prize, Mistral's writing is familiar throughout the region, but not well...

Muriel Feiner, Women and the Bullring.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Muriel Feiner, Women and the Bullring. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2003, 384 pp., hardcover. Feiner uses a combination of personal accounts, her own experiences, and historical evidence to paint a vivid picture of the history...

Kathryn A. Flynn, The Sexual Abuse of Women by Members of the Clergy.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Kathryn A. Flynn, The Sexual Abuse of Women by Members of the Clergy. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003, 296 pp., paper. A study of 25 women in the United States who have experienced clergy sexual abuse. Arguing that a sexual relationship between...

Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Aged by Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Aged By Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 267 pp., paper. Gullette opens her book by describing an exhibit at a science museum where young children were shown pictures of what they might look...

Sylvia Kahan, Music's Modern Muse: a Life of Winneretta Singer, Princess de Polignac.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Sylvia Kahan, Music's Modern Muse: A Life of Winneretta Singer, Princess de Polignac. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2003, 546 pp., hardcover. Singer's contributions to the early 20th-century music and art. As heir to the Singer...

Stephanie Wellen Levine, Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers: An Intimate Journey among Hasidic Girls.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Stephanie Wellen Levine, Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers: An Intimate Journey among Hasidic Girls. New York: New York University Press, 2003, 254 pp., hardcover. Levine spent a year living with a Lubavitcher Hasidic family in Crown Heights,...

Ellen FitzSimmons Steinberg, Irma: a Chicago Woman's Story.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Ellen FitzSimmons Steinberg, Irma: A Chicago Woman's Story, 1871-1966. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2004, 229 pp., paperback. Wandering through a used bookstore on a rainy day, independent scholar Steinberg literally stumbled upon a...

Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach and Patricia Smith, eds., Women and the United States Constitution: History, Interpretation, and Practice.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach and Patricia Smith, eds., Women and the United States Censtitution: History, Interpretation, and Practice. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2003, 396 pp., paperback. Women were not among the authors of the US...

Carol I. Winkelmann, The Language of Battered Women: a Rhetorical Analysis of Personal Theologies.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Carol I. Winkelmann, The Language of Battered Women: A Rhetorical Analysis of Personal Theologies, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004, 273 pp., paper. The epigraph of this book is from a resident of a shelter for battered...