The Women's Review of Books articles from May 2001

The Women's Review of Books archives from May 2001

The imagination's questions.(Review)
May 1, 2001... Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations by Adrienne Rich. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001, 192 pp., $23.95 hardcover. Adrienne Rich's new prose collection could have been titled The Essential Rich. It includes essays well known to a...

Extended families.(Review)
May 1, 2001... Like Our Very Own: Adoption and the Changing Culture of Motherhood, 1851-1950 by Julie Berebitsky. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2000, 248 pp., $34.95 hardcover. Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution Is Transforming...

Less is more.
May 1, 2001... Novelist Francesca Duranti creates a gallery of social misfits Of Francesca Duranti's nine books, four are available in English. They are slender volumes, barely two hundred pages each, as if the author were watching their waist lines, and...

Over the wall.(Review)
May 1, 2001... Brick by Brick: A Woman's Journey by Lynn Donohue with Pamela Hunt. New Bedford, MA: Spinner Publications, 2000, 274 pp., $24.00 hardcover. Although as memoir and history Brick by Brick has shortcomings, it tells an emblematic story with...

Ghost writer.(Review)
May 1, 2001... In a State of Memory by Tununa Mercado, translated by Peter Kahn. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2001, 155 pp., $45.00 hardcover, $15.00 paper. It's well known that he who returns/never really left," wrote Pablo Neruda in his...

Family album.(Review)
May 1, 2001... One Family by Vaughn Sills. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2001, 164 pp., $29.95 hardcover. One Family is the result of a twenty-year project interviewing and photographing the Toole family of Bogart, Georgia. Though she...

Curing the incurable.(Review)
May 1, 2001... To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann by Gail A. Hornstein. New York: The Free Press, 2000, 480 pp., $34.00 hardcover. Those of us old enough to have seen the movie I Never Promised You a...

Safe at last?(Review)
May 1, 2001... Devices and Desires: A History of Contraception in America by Andrea Tone. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001, 368 pp., $30.00 hardcover. With the help of friends and colleagues, I've developed a pretty impressive list of actors for the...

Acting out.(Review)
May 1, 2001... The Five Lesbian Brothers (Four Plays) by Maureen Angelos, Babs Davy), Dominique Dibbell, Peg Healey, Lisa Kron. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2000, 286 pp., $16.95 paper. Ask anyone interested in feminist performance to name...

Poets without borders.(Review)
May 1, 2001... Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form by Matthea Harvey. Farmington, ME: Alice James Books, 2000, 67 pp., $11.95 paper. Domestic Work by Natasha Trethewey. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2000, 58 pp., $12.95 paper....

The pursuit of happiness.(Review)
May 1, 2001... Finding Celia's Place by Celia Morris. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2000, 307 pp., $29.95 hardcover. Celia Morris grew up in Houston. I did, too, in a neighborhood adjoining hers. She was a child during World War Two and...

Bedside manners.(Review)
May 1, 2001... Hearts of Wisdom: American Women Caring for Kin, 1850-1940 by Emily K. Abel. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000, 326 pp., $49.95 hardcover. Dutiful Daughters: Caring for Our Parents as They Grow Old edited by Jean Gould. Seattle:...

Brief life.(Review)
May 1, 2001... Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters by Linda Hunt Beckman. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2000, 319 pp., $49.95 hardcover, $24.95 paper. Who could resist the story of a Victorian Jewish lesbian feminist Cambridge student, a talented...

Tangled tales.(Review)
May 1, 2001... Trailer Girl and Other Stories by Terese Svoboda. Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 2001, 240 pp., $23.00 hardcover. The World's Smallest Unicorn: Stories by Shena Mackay. Wakefield, RI: Moyer Bell, 2000, 223 pp., $22.95 hardcover. You...