The Women's Review of Books articles from September 2004

The Women's Review of Books archives from September 2004

Erasing the lines.(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... The Line: Women, Partition and the Gender Order in Cyprus by Cynthia Cockburn. New York: Zed Books, 2004, 244 pp., $25.00 paper. April 24, 2004, was a historic day in the troubled history of the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. More than...

Reaching across divided societies: a conversation with Cynthia Cockburn.(Interview)
September 1, 2004... Cynthia Cockburn was invited to Turkey by Sabanci University to give a talk on her new book The Line in March 2004. She spoke in Istanbul, Diyarbakir, and Mardin, and met with various women's groups from western and eastern Turkey. The...

Letters.
September 1, 2004... Dear Editor, I am writing you as the editor of the Women's Review of Books with regard to a review by Rebecca Steinitz of Emma Brown in the July 2004 issue. I enjoyed the piece on the Brontes, but want to add a note about Emma Brown....

From recruit to soldier: military discipline is enforced with marching chants--and their often sexist, racist, and brutal messages.
September 1, 2004... Almost everyone has seen the movies about basic training. Some celebrate it; some mock it; but each typically depicts a tight-lipped, square-jawed dynamo of a drill instructor barking commands at a group of hapless recruits whose every act...

Persepolis 2 The Story Of A Return.(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... PERSEPOLIS 2: THE STORY OF A RETURN BY MARJANE SATRAPI PANTHEON, 2004M 192pp, $17.95 I SEE WE'RE STILL FLAVOR OF THE MONTH. IT'S BETTER THAN BEING INVISIBLE. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] YES, BUT WHO GETS TO DEFINE US? IF I SEE...

Dueling masculinities.(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004, 480 pp., $28.00 hardcover, $14.00 paper. This year has offered Bush-watchers a treasure trove of insiders hooks. Right now, my own collection is dispersed throughout the...

Pink thongs and patriarchy: in protests against the Iraq war, women are using the media and popular culture as never before.
September 1, 2004... Women have been leading the most creative, inviting, and lasting manifestations of the movement against the war on Iraq. The most visible leaders of large coalitions like United for Peace and Justice, and of many small, local groups as well,...

Pro-whose-life? Ten reasons why militarism is bad for your health.
September 1, 2004... These days, we've heard the most unlikely people sound the battle cry of equal rights for women whenever they want to argue for more funds for the military or for aggressive action in yet another small, poverty-stricken country. When the US...

The Beheadings.(Poetry, War, and Peace)(Poem)
September 1, 2004... The Beheadings The guillotine at least was swift. After the head pitched sideways into a basket and was raised to a thirsty crowd that roared approval of death from above, the sun turned a garish yellow and froze on...

Mother with Toddler in War Time.(Poetry, War, and Peace)(Poem)
September 1, 2004... Mother with Toddler in War Time The first soft day after an intractable winter a child, conceived before the Towers burned but born after, commands a flock of geese: Do this/Do this/ as her...

War on the Schedule.(Poetry, War, and Peace)(Poem)
September 1, 2004... War on the Schedule The corner restaurant where you plan to meet may not be there. The chair you position to catch the sun on her hair may be on its side, glass crushed on glass and the napkins...

How He Rued tin Good Ambiguity, Nee Hope.(From Scenes from a Courtship During Wartime)
September 1, 2004... How He Rued tin Good Ambiguity, Nee Hope 9 mins, long-distance ($2.52) He would have been either standing or sitting, Or leaning, bracing, and then perhaps sitting: Later he became something like expansive. ...

"Accidentally".(From Scenes from a Courtship During Wartime)
September 1, 2004... "Accidentally" Here we had the luxury of not knowing The splaying of feeling into everything That looks like a bleeding-over, spreading, Everywhere seeping; but is a sign of war. The luxury of not knowing--not...

The Bird as a Bird.(From Scenes from a Courtship During Wartime)
September 1, 2004... The Bird a Bird Front the Basque of JoxAnton Artze If I had cut off its wings It would have been mine. It wouldn't have gone away. But then, It wouldn't have been a bird at all. And I loved the bird...

Now.(From Scenes from a Courtship During Wartime)
September 1, 2004... NOW: There's no way to say it, except the blunt way: facts, searing the eye, facts in the nostrils: what you love most becomes what won't keep, that's the oldest part of the story, not hard: these words slide ...

Connecting the dots.(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire by Arundhati Roy. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2004, 200 pp., $12.00 paper. The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy. Interviews by David Barsamian. ...

A life of resistance: ethnographer and concentration camp survivor Germaine Tillion is little known in the US but a hero in France for her lifelong opposition to violence and torture.(Biography)
September 1, 2004... French ethnographer Germaine Tillion, now aged 96, was in Algiers when the Nazis invaded France in June 1940. She had just completed five-and-a-half years of intensive research among Berber seminomads in the Aures mountains, at the edge of the...

The "Newspeak" of our time.(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them by Amy Goodman with David Goodman. Hyperion: New York, 2004, 342 pp., $21.95 hardcover. If there is hope," Winston Smith, the protagonist...

The sword and the shield: a conversation with independent journalist Amy Goodman.(Interview)
September 1, 2004... Harriet Malinowitz: Why did you write The Exemption to the Rulers? Amy Goodman: I think the media is everyone's, or should be. The corporate media is using the public airwaves, and they have a responsibility to bring out the full diversity...

The unmothering.(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Let Me Go by Helga Schneider. New York: Walker & Company, 2004, 172 pp., $19.00 hardcover. A Young wife and mother of two children becomes involved in local political activities. She hires a babysitter so she can attend weekly organizing...

Where are the girls? girls have become indispensable members of many armies, in Africa and around the world. Their treatment is often brutal and their reintegration into the community difficult.
September 1, 2004... I joined the rebels of my own free will." Antonia M. was in the seventh grade when she joined the armed opposition forces of Renamo in 1989, during the height of Mozambique's devastating civil war (1976-1992). As a bright young woman who wanted...

Hidden soldiers: women with jobs in the defense industry must keep the nature of their work secret--from friends, family, and even themselves.
September 1, 2004... Over the last 50 years, the US has been obsessed with continual preparation for war. The primary beneficiaries of this obsession have been private defense contractors, who rely on US government for their economic well being. While men hold the...

Shaping the past.(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Naked Barbies, Warrior Joes, & Other Forms of Visible Gender by Jeanne Banks Thomas. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003, 240 pp., $39.95 hardcover, $21.95 paper. Restoring Women's History Through Historic Preservation edited by...

Memory and survival.(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust by Eva Hoffman. New York: PublicAffairs, 2004, 301 pp., $25.00 hardcover. The Jewish Women of Ravensbruck Concentration Camp by Rochelle G. Saidel. Madison, WI:...

Organizing for peace in Israel: why Israeli and Palestinian women want a peace movement of their own.(Coalition of Women for Peace)
September 1, 2004... On Sunday, February 4, 2001, 500 women gathered on the road opposite Israel's ministry of defense in Tel Aviv. We dressed in black and donned sandwich boards with the word "closure" painted across them in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. At a...

Courtney Angela Brkic, The Stone Fields: An Epitaph for the Living.(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Courtney Angela Brkic, The Stone Fields: An Epitaph for the Living. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004, 316 pp., hardcover. In clear, vivid language, Brkic writes about genocide and pain that spans generations. From her own family's...

Ann Crittenden, If You've Raised Kids, You Can Manage Anything: Leadership Begins at Home.(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Ann Crittenden, If You've Raised Kids, You Can Manage Anything: Leadership Begins at Home. New York: Gotham, 2004, 274 pp., hardcover. Recognizing that the skills needed for successful parenting are applicable in many arenas, including the...

Sharon M. Harris, ed., Blue Pencils & Hidden Hands: Women Editing Periodicals, 1830-1910.(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Sharon M. Harris, ed., Blue Pencils & Hidden Hands: Women Editing Periodicals, 1830-1910. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004, 279 pp., hardcover. In the 19th century, magazines experienced a surge in popularity, so that by the 1920s...

Elizabeth Hudson, Snow Bodies: One Woman's Life on the Streets.(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Elizabeth Hudson, Snow Bodies: One Woman's Life on the Streets. Alberta, Canada: NeWest, 2004, 26.8 pp., paper. A memoir of the years Hudson spent as a heroin addict and prostitute in Calgary and Vancouver. The book opens as Hudson leaves...

Martha Schmoyer LoMonaco, Summer Stock! An American Theatrical Phenomenon.(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Martha Schmoyer LoMonaco, Summer Stock! An American Theatrical Phenomenon. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, 293 pp., hardcover. LoMonaco spent time in summer stock theater, like most theater professionals today. Her book discusses the...

Leslie Miller-Bernal and Susan L. Poulson, Going Coed: Women's Experience is Formerly Men's Colleges and Universities, 1950-2000.(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Leslie Miller-Bernal and Susan L. Poulson, Going Coed: Women's Experience is Formerly Men's Colleges and Universities, 1950-2000. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004, 338 pp., paper. Thirteen essays look at why women were accepted...

Judy Wajcman, TechnoFeminism.(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Judy Wajcman, TechnoFeminism. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2004, 148 pp., paper. The author of Feminism Confronts Technology, Wajcman explores three central fields of concern for women: virtual reality, the digital economy, and biomedical...

Linda Williams, ed., Porn Studies.(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Linda Williams, ed., Porn Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004, 516 pp., paper. With sexual issues increasingly in the forefront of public discourse, from television to political and religious scandals, the nation has become...

Jean Wyatt, Risking Difference: Identification, Race, and Community in Contemporary Fiction and Feminism.(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Jean Wyatt, Risking Difference: Identification, Race, and Community in Contemporary Fiction and Feminism. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004, 286 pp., paper. Drawing on Freudian and Lacanian theories, Wyatt analyzes...