The Women's Review of Books articles from November 2008

The Women's Review of Books archives from November 2008

Beware generationalism.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2008... I want to share my discomfort with the review "Talking about My Generation," by Patricia Justine Tumang [WRB, July/August 2008]. The author's very first sentence took for granted that only "daughters"--i.e., younger women--would be her readers....

Playing the game square.(An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene's Journey from Prejudice to Privilege)(Book review)
November 1, 2008... An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene's Journey from Prejudice to Privilege by Heidi Ardizzone New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007, 580 pp., $35.00, hardcover Belle da Costa Greene had it all and then some. She was...

Rape culture.(Rape: Sex, Violence, History)(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Rape: Sex, Violence, History By Joanna Bourke Berkeley, CA: Shoemaker and Hoard Publishers, 2007, 565 pp., $30.00, hardcover [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In 1975, in her book Against Our Will, journalist Susan Brownmiller fired a...

Reading the book of the earth.(When the Ground Turns in iIs Sleep)(Book review)
November 1, 2008... When the Ground Turns in its Sleep By Sylvia Sellers-Garcia New York: Riverhead Books, 2007, 325 pp., $24.95, hardcover "The Earth is the root and the source of our culture. She keeps our memories, she receives our ancestors..."...

Welfare reform to suit the state.(Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation)(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation By Anna Marie Smith New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 297 pp., $29.99, paperback Aside from hard-core feminist academics, activists, and advocates who work on the issue of women and...

Syphilis of the innocent.(Amalia's Tale: An Impoverished Peasant Woman, an Ambitious Attorney, and a Fight for Justice)(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Amalia's Tale: An Impoverished Peasant Woman, an Ambitious Attorney, and a Fight for Justice By David I. Kertzer Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008, 237 pp., $24.00, hardcover Breastfeeding can be the most intimate and private of acts...

Written in stone.(Cartoon)
November 1, 2008... History is written on little pieces of paper, That's what I was thinking as 1 was researching the graphic novel I'm doing about the IWW union organizer Frank H. Little. He went to Butte, Montana, to help striking miners the summer the U.S....

The nonanxiety of influence.('Fragment of the Head of a Queen', 'Blessings and Inclemencies', 'The Dirty Side of the Storm')(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Fragment of the Head of a Queen By Cate Marvin Louisville, KY: Sarabande Books, 2007, 95 pp., $13.95, paperback Blessings and Inclemencies By Constance Merritt Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007, 70 pp.,...

Poetry of science.('What the Blood Knows', 'Constituents of Matter', 'One-Breasted Woman')(Book review)
November 1, 2008... What the Blood Knows By Peggy Miller Cincinnati, OH: Custom Words, 2007, 84 pp., $17.00, paperback Constituents of Matter By Anna Leahy Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2007, 73 pp., $14.00, paperback ...

The text as fellowship: remembering Miriam Goodman (September 14, 1938-May 11, 2008).(Field Notes)(In memoriam)
November 1, 2008... In much of her work--poems, prose, photography, flash-movies, and image-text projects--Miriam Goodman explored people in community. She observed and responded to the richness, sorrows, and tensions of couples, parents and children, friends,...

White.(Poetry)(Poem)
November 1, 2008... White "You need someone just like him but white." My mother's blue eyes through bifocals leveled with mine from her executive refuge at the kitchen table. My first visit home that year: why did I show her lines he...

Of Omission.(Poetry)(Poem)
November 1, 2008... Of Omission Lifeline season, 3 a.m., and I sat up in late September's blaze of maple while you slept on after love on the pallet of goosefeather and blue ticking I'd unrolled for us beyond ...

Heat and fire.(Map of Ireland)(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Map of Ireland By Stephanie Grant New York: Scribner, 2008, 208 pp., $22.00, hardcover [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The notion of "coming out," while useful in the queer cultural dialogue, is ultimately reductive, making a...

Doing science differently.('Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer Among the Romantics', 'Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of Telomeres')(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer among the Romantics By Renee Bergland Boston: Beacon Press, 2008, 282 pp., $29.95, hardeover Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of Telomeres By Catherine Brady ...

The truth in the middle.(To Love What Is: A Marriage Transformed)(Book review)
November 1, 2008... To Love What Is: A Marriage Transformed By Alix Kates Shulman New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, 180 pp., $22.00, hardcover It's all life until death," Grace Paley affirms in the epigraph to Alix Kates Shulman's new book....

The awesome body.(books on bodies)(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body By Jennifer Ackerman New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007, 272 pp., $25.00, hardcover Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss--and the Myths and Realities of Dieting ...

Of love and loss.(Loving the Difficult)(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Loving the Difficult By Jane Rule Sidney, BC: Hedgerow Press, 2008, 205 pp., $21.95, paperback [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In 1981, Jane Rule published Outlander, a collection of short stories and essays, to offer to her friends on...

The immigrant generations.(Unaccustomed Earth)(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Unaccustomed Earth By Jhumpa Lahiri New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008, 331 pp., $25.00, hardcover [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Indian immigrants in America--their material success, their intergenerational tensions, and their...