The Women's Review of Books articles from October 2002

The Women's Review of Books archives from October 2002

Weaving a spell.
October 1, 2002... Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002, 445 pp., $24.00 hardcover. In 1984 Arte Publico Press in Houston published The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Neither press nor author were known beyond the circles...

The making of a historian.
October 1, 2002... Fireweed: A Political Autobiography by Gerda Lerner. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002, 377 pp., $34.50 hardcover. Gerda Lerner, the author of this eloquent autobiography, is best known as a pioneer in women's history. Not only is...

Brought to light.
October 1, 2002... Her Works Praise Her: A History of Jewish Women in America from Colonial Times to the Present by Hasia R. Diner and Beryl Lieff Benderly. New York: Basic Books, 2002, 462 pp., $35.00 hardcover. The flyleaf of Her Works Praise Her announces:...

Playboy's parents.
October 1, 2002... Governing Pleasures: Pornography and Social Change in England 1815-1914 by Lisa Z. Sigel. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002, 227 pp., $24.00 paper. It would be hard to find a feminist in North America who did not have an...

Survival skills.
October 1, 2002... No Bones by Anna Burns. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002, 321 pp., $13.95 paper. Bones have been surfacing in the fiction of women writers this season, bearing durable witness to otherwise hidden and voiceless stories of human...

Siblings without rivalry.
October 1, 2002... Riding the Bus with My Sister: How I Learned to Slow Down and Enjoy the Ride by Rachel Simon. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002, 304 pp., $23.00 hardcover. When I was ten years old, I secretly asked Santa for a new sister. I wanted one who...

One-upwomanship.
October 1, 2002... Catfight: Women and Competition by Leora Tanenbaum. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002, 335 pp., $24.95 hardcover. An editor intercepts a letter to one of her writers about working on a new book, then takes the job herself. A teenage girl...

Battle of the Bronx.
October 1, 2002... The War at Home: A Memoir-Novel by Nora Eisenberg. Wellfleet, MA: Leapfrog Press, 2002, 216 pp., $14.95 paper. The War at Home belongs to a literary tradition reaching back into the nineteenth century. Early Victorians first coined the term...

Remembering June Jordan.
October 1, 2002... Last June 14th, writer and activist June Jordan died of cancer at the age of 65. A memorial service was held for her on September 15th at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught for many years. The Women's Review asked a...

From dogmas to dilemmas.
October 1, 2002... Melting Pots and Rainbow Nations: Conversations about Difference in the United States and South Africa by Jacklyn Cock and Alison Bernstein. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002, 241 pp., $35.00 hardcover, $17.95 paper. Early in...

No place like home?
October 1, 2002... Starting at Home: Caring and Social Policy by Nel Noddings. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002, 342 pp., $19.95 paper. Child Care Policy at the Crossroads: Gender and Welfare State Restructuring edited by Sonya Michel...

Tragic flaws.
October 1, 2002... Female Acts in Greek Tragedy by Helene Foley. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001, 410 pp., $45.00 hardcover. Greek tragedy was written, directed, judged and acted only by men. Presented by and to a city--Athens--that...

Abandoned genius.
October 1, 2002... Camille Claudel: A Life by Odile Ayral-Clause. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002, 279 pp., $29.95 hardcover. When sculptor Camille Claudel began studying with Auguste Rodin in 1882, she was seventeen, living with her parents and focused on...

Living contradictions.
October 1, 2002... Woman at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy by Peggy Reeves Sanday. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002, 288 pp., $29.95 hardcover. For eighteen years Peggy Reeves Sanday, author of such books as A Woman Scorned: Acquaintance...

The bookshelf.
October 1, 2002... Each month we list the recently published books received during the preceding month or so which we think readers of the Women's Review will want to know about. This is, however, a very partial selection of the books by and about women published...