The Women's Review of Books articles from May 2006

The Women's Review of Books archives from May 2006

40% for the social sciences.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... I'm something of a book review junkie: I subscribe to the New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement. I also read the NY Times and Washington Post book reviews. I'm also a feminist author of books on social policy, having...

Literature OK--but not of chicks.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... While I mostly have to agree with Barbara Bergmann's assessment, I want to note that there are many of us academics who do teach literature classes focusing on women writers. So we are interested in poetry and fiction (as well as essays,...

Hooray.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... Congratulations! So exciting to be holding right here in my hands and reading--the lively, smart, revived WRB. What a terrific achievement. And, really, a gift to us all. In the January/February issue, I love the interview with Dona...

The roar ahead.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... I want to thank you for the hard work and effort--and inspiration--in bringing Women's Review of Books back to its readers and contributors, and to those in the near future. Especially, for me personally, I am very grateful for the poetry...

Corrections.(Correction notice)
May 1, 2006... Because of an editing error (for which reviewer Jasmin Darznik bears no responsibility), the review of A Bed of Red Flowers in the January/February 2006 WRB used incorrect terminology to refer to Afghan women. "Afghanis" are units of currency;...

Getting our fair share.(Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men--and What to Do about It)(Book review)
May 1, 2006... Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men--and What To Do About It By Evelyn Murphy with E. J. Graff New York: Touchstone/Simon and Schuster, 2005, 342 pp., $24.00, Hardcover. Before 1964-that's more than forty years...

Media discrimination begets biased content.
May 1, 2006... The mainstream media often enlists women to proclaim that the wage gap is either the fault of feminists (Kate O'Beirne's National Review article "59 Cents, and Other Rot--A took at some feminist myths" is typical of headlines in conservative...

The tax on being female: 23 cents per hour and counting: media critic Jennifer L. Pozner talks with Evelyn Murphy and her collaborator E.J. Graff about their new book Getting Even, the wage gap, the media, and what individuals, employers, and legislators can do to achieve equity at long last.(Interview)
May 1, 2006... JENNIFER L. POZNER: Your primary claim in Getting Even is that "Over her working lifetime, a woman will lose between $700,000 and $2 million," and that women still earn approximately 77 cents for every dollar men earn for comparable work. How...

Stories from the Big House.(A World Apart: Women, Prison and Life Behind Bars)(All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated)(Book review)
May 1, 2006... A World Apart: Women, Prison and Life Behind Bars. By Cristina Rathbone New York: Random House, 2005, 279 pp., $24.95, hardcover All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated By Nell Bernstein New York: The New Press, 2005, 320 pp.,...

What Women Lose: Exile and the Construction of Imaginary Homelands in Novels by Caribbean Writers.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2006... This book examines novels by women from the Anglophone, francophone, and hispanophone Caribbean that focus on marginalized female characters who migrate to metropolitan centers. The novels studied require cultural historical, sociological,...

Reconfiguring the world.(Out of Joint: A Private and Public Story of Arthritis )(All in My Head: An Epic Quest To Cure An Unrelenting, Totally Unreasonable, And Only Slightly Englightening HEADACHE )(My Body Politic: A )(Book review)Memoir
May 1, 2006... Out of Joint: A Private and Public Story of Arthritis By Mary Felstiner Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2005, 218 pp., $25.00, hardcover All in My Head: An Epic Quest To Cure An Unrelenting, Totally Unreasonable, And Only...

Of the people, by the people.(Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty)(Book review)
May 1, 2006... Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty By Annalise Orleck Boston: Beacon Press, 2005, 368 pp., $29.95, hardcover The 1980s were a golden age of makeovers for black female stereotypes, culminating with...

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons.(Photography)
May 1, 2006... Sculptor, installation artist, videographer, and photographer, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons' works have earned international acclaim. In she elegantly renders elements of her personal history and persona in art forms that have almost universal...

Books matter.(Essay)
May 1, 2006... In the 1970s I interviewed an elderly labor historian named Morris Schnapper. He told stories of his lifelong work exposing anti-union dirty tricks and government antilabor programs. At one point he told me about how the CIA had created a...

Following the money.(Women and the U.S. Budget: Where the Money Goes and What You Can Do about It)(Book review)
May 1, 2006... Women and the U.S. Budget: Where the Money Goes and What You Can Do About It By Jane Midgley Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2005, 202 pp., $16.95, paperback Women and their children have an economic relationship with the...

Octavia E. Butler: June 22, 1947-February 24, 2006.(Obituary)
May 1, 2006... Octavia E. Butler, award-winning science fiction writer and recipient of a 1995 MacArthur, "genius grant" fellowship, died on February 24, 2006, after a fall outside her home in Lake Forest Park, Washington. In recent years she had suffered...

Tuning Our Guitars.(Poetry)(Poem)
May 1, 2006... Tuning Our Guitars Hit your high E. Give me A. Ours was always easy harmony, you're a song I want to play my whole life, but tempo strays-- I flub rhythm, you botch lead. Hit your high E, give me A, ...

For Johnny: My Sick Dog.(Poetry)(Poem)
May 1, 2006... For Johnny MY SICK DOG He is a collapsing star, a white dwarf cooling a summer goose the north is calling a mug of dregs, a hollowed rind a piece of loose-leaf page thinned by the eraser He plays dead He...

Fiction.(Field Notes)(White Spirit)(Midnight at the Dragon Cafe)(Book review)
May 1, 2006... White Spirit by Paule Constant, translated by Betsy Wing Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2006, 172 pp., $19.95 paperback Midnight at the Dragon Cafe by Judy Fong Bates New York: Counterpoint, 2005, 315 pp., $14.00 paperback ...

An acrobat of the imagination.(Monologue of a Dog)(Book review)
May 1, 2006... Monologue of a Dog By Wislawa Szymborska New York: Harcourt, 2005, 96 pp., $22.00, hardcover. Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak. Perhaps we should simply be grateful that Harcourt has provided us with a...

Yaoi 101: girls love "boys' love".(manga, Japanese comics a rage among girls)
May 1, 2006... This may sound like a quote from a romance novel, except that in this Japanese manga, or comic, created by women for women, the lovers are pretty gay boys. Manga have hit America big time. If you're an adult, the word "manga" may not be in your...

Strangers to themselves.(The Inheritance of Loss)(Book review)
May 1, 2006... The Inheritance of Loss By Kiran Desai New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006, 336 pp., $24.00, hardcover " Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss?" asks author Kiran Desai, as she explores the multifaceted aspects of loss....

The right woman.(Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade )(Book review)
May 1, 2006... Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade By Donald T. Critchlow Princeton, N J: Princeton University Press, 2005, 422 pp., $29.95 hardcover Hearing that I would be reviewing a new political biography of Phyllis...

What I'm reading now, in which I confess several times to my failings: Women's Review writers and readers let us know what they're reading in their spare time.(On My Bookshelf)
May 1, 2006... Let me begin with a confession: I'm an embarrassingly slow reader. As a result, I have a ridiculous backlog in my "books to read next" piles; I'm always a couple of years (at best!) behind the hot new topics. My piles fall into two categories:...