The Women's Review of Books articles from March 2006

The Women's Review of Books archives from March 2006

Born again.(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... At last! A legitimate use for the expression "born again." I was an early subscriber and sometime contributor to the original WRB, and its disappearance left a hole in my life as well as in my mailbox. But I think the vacation had its upside....

Just lovers.(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... It was like being reunited with a long-lost lover--one whom you knew you weren't over, who out of the blue, when you least expect it, appears! Nowhere has this reader felt such a deep sense of being home, of being understood and appreciated for...

The return of the feminist conversation.(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... Returned yesterday from a week out of town to find Women's Review in my pile of mail. Truly, the only valuable item in the whole stack. Congratulations! The design is very snazzy, and I love the colors on the front page. Yes, great content,...

At the kitchen table.(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... Congratulations on a terrific first "new" issue! I got home yesterday around noon to find my husband sitting at the kitchen table reading Women's Review of Books--a definite first. Jan Putnam Wellesley, Massachusetts

Integrity and grit.(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... I was thrilled to get the relaunch issue in the mail last week. I sat right down and started reading every word from the editor's letter forward. The new look to the cover is great. I especially enjoyed the review of Vivian Gornick's The...

Wielding the blue pen.(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... The layout and color scheme are perfect and the range of articles is nonpareil. My favorites: the interview with Doha Boraki from Tangiers and the article on the Peabody girls, though the essays on Eudora Welty and Lady Day are also quite good....

One of the boys.("Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army ")(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army By Kayla Williams with Michael E. Straub New York: W.W Norton Company, 2005, 290 pp., hardcover, $24.95 One in seven service members serving in Iraq is female. One in three...

Africa, as the women tell it.(Women Writing Africa: West Africa and the Sahel )(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Women Writing Africa: West Africa and the Sahel Edited by Esi Sutherland-Addy and Aminata Diaw New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2005, 460 pages, $29.95, paperback An Old Man Give me an old man, I'll surely...

Woman suffrage's "Long March".("Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists")("Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman's Rights in Antebellum New York ")(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists By Jean H. Baker New York: Hill and Wang, 2005, 277 pages, $25.00, hardcover Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman's Rights in Antebellum New York By Lori D. Ginzberg Chapel Hill: University of North...

Germany's "Silenced Library".(Essay)(literature on German Democratic Republic's history)
March 1, 2006... In the fall of 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down and the foundations of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) crumbled, readers in the West assumed that it would be only a matter of time until a riveting clandestine literature--written during...

Gathering the story.("The Painted Drum")(Book review)
March 1, 2006... The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005, 276 pp, $25.95 hardcover When I read Louise Erdrich's first novel, Love Medicine, twenty years ago, I wanted to run outside, shouting. I was astounded by how...

Men and women are from earth.(Essay)(sex differences)
March 1, 2006... Do men and women come from two separate "communication cultures" that make it difficult for them to hear one another? Are they doomed to moan, eternally, "You just don't understand?" Are women the caring, sharing, open sex, while men are...

Up and down on the work-parenting carousel.("Truth Behind the Mommy Wars: Who Decides What Makes a Good Mother?")("Parenting and Professing: Balancing Family Work with an Academic Career")(Book review)
March 1, 2006... The Truth behind the Mommy Wars: Who Decides What Makes a Good Mother By Miriam Peskowitz Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2005, 243 pp., $15.95, paperback Parenting and Professing: Balancing Family Work with an Academic Career Edited by Rachel...

Women gone wild.("Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture ")("Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families ")(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture By Ariel Levy New York: Free Press, 2005, 224 pp., $25.00, hardcover Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families By Pamela Paul New...

Menopause I: Conversations with God.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... Menopause I: Conversations with God 1. Just a bit off the top, here, Says God the barber. A bit off the sides. Now it's not even. Let me try again. Snip snap. A straw Of salt and pepper falls across the floor. ...

Menopause II: Rereading Kenneth Rexroth's Poems from the Greek Anthology.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... Menopause II: Rereading Kenneth Rexroth's Poems from the Greek Anthology The rain fell steadily last night, soothing and arousing, Straight from heaven or arrested briefly by the canopy Of maple, oak, black walnut, a...

The genius.(Cartoon)
March 1, 2006... [c]2006 CAMPER WE'VE ALL HEARD STORIES ABOUT BRILLIANT MALE WRITERS WITH NO SOCIAL SKILLS AND ALL-AROUND DISGUSTING HABITS WHO SOMEHOW ATTRACT SELFLESS WOMEN WILLING TO MEET THE AUTHORS' EVERY NEED, WHY DON'T WOMEN WRITERS HAVE THEIR...

The secret of the missing author.("Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her")(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her By Melanie Rehak Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2005, 364 pages, $25, hardcover I was lucky enough to inherit a few of the original 1930s Nancy Drews, with their blue covers--the dust jackets...

The black actor's dilemma.("Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood")(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood By Jill Watts New York: Amistad, 2005, 368 pp., $27.95, hardcover For decades, the silver screen was lily white. Until the late twentieth century, African Americans appeared rarely in...

Brazil beyond the borders.(First World Third Class and Other Tales of the Global Mix)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... First World Third Class and Other Tales of the Global Mix By Regina Rheda Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005, 304 pp., $24.95 paper First World Third Class and Other Tales of the Global Mix serves as a Regina Rheda reader, introducing...

The power of secrets.("Captain of the Sleepers")(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Captain of the Sleepers By Mayra Montero New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005, 192 pp. $22.00 hardcover Everyone carries secrets, and a secret, like reality, can have a different meaning for each person. Can one ever be sure that the...

The shelter of each other.("On Beauty")(Book review)
March 1, 2006... On Beauty By Zadie Smith New York, Penguin, 2005, 446 pp., $25.95, hardcover One may as well begin with Howards End. With the first sentence of her new novel, On Beauty, Zadie Smith declares E. M. Forster's 1910 novel, Howards End, to be a...

On my bookshelf: Women's Review writers and readers let us know what they're reading in their spare time.
March 1, 2006... Like everyone, I am looking forward to reading Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. I hear it is not depressing. Still, I have been warming up for it with Donald Hall's affecting poems, Without, about his wife, Jane Kenyon, and her...