Wellesley Centers for Women Blog Entries tagged 'Womens Review of Books'

Feasting and Reading

wrbblog@wcwonline.org — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Column: Nothing but the Toth

By Emily Toth for WOMEN = BOOKS

With this post, Emily kicks off her column for WRB, “Nothing but the Toth,” in which she’ll “share with the world,” she says, her “many opinions and bons mots.” First up: a cornucopia of writing about food.

If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?

Wo [...]

Intermediate Forms and Women's Writing

wrbblog@wcwonline.org — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Column: Music of Fragments

By Carol Dorf for WOMEN = BOOKS

With this post, Carol kicks off her column for WRB, “Music of Fragments," in which she hopes "to look at the divergent musics of our poetry communities." The column title, Carol says, "originates with several poems by Muriel Rukeyser. In 'The Poem as Mask,' Orpheus speaks the line 'the fragments join in me [...]

�A Star Danced, & Under that Was I Born�: Ellen Terry�s Brilliant Career

wrbblog@wcwonline.org — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 01:00:00 +0100

By Penny Farfan for WOMEN = BOOKS

Ellen Terry was a forerunner of today’s celebrities, living a glamorous life in the public eye. Inscribing a photograph of herself as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing with a favorite line from the play—“a star danced, & under that was I born”—she suggested through her character’s words the sparkle of her own stage presence and public personality.

[...]

Keeping Abreast of Women

wrbblog@wcwonline.org — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:00:00 +0100

By Emily Toth for WOMEN = BOOKS

I still have my well-thumbed copy of Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl—but my favorite good part wasn’t about sex, exactly.

It was about nipples.

Brown’s overriding message—a scandal when she wrote it—was about free sex. Have sex with any man you want to have sex with! (Girl-on-girl wasn’t talked about then, though apparently she wa [...]

Joanna Russ and the Feminist Press: Are There Still Too Many Trembling Sisters?

wrbblog@wcwonline.org — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:00:00 +0100

A Challenge to Take Our Work Seriously

By Susanna J. Sturgis for WOMEN = BOOKS

In April 1980, as a barely fledged feminist book reviewer, I reviewed a very bad Naiad Press science fiction novel for off our backs. My review relied heavily on extensive description of the plot, the first resort of novice and insecure reviewers.

Reading between the lines, one might surmise that the reviewer wasn't entirely [...]

Elizabeth Blackburn: �Long Overdue for a Nobel�

wrbblog@wcwonline.org — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 01:00:00 +0100

By Kathleen Ochs for WOMEN = BOOKS

During my college years in the mid-1960s, the science-math types intrigued by Venn diagrams joked that one example of an empty set was “southern, black, jews.” I’d add that “women, scientists, engineers” is considered another empty set or close to it. Women scientists are still looked upon “as men, cast by the vengeance of the gods, into female gender,” as Ursula Frankli [...]

Free to Be...Cinderella and Me

wrbblog@wcwonline.org — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 01:00:00 +0100

Column: Fiction from the Front Lines

By Rebecca Meacham for WOMEN = BOOKS

With this post, Rebecca kicks off her column for WRB, “Fiction from the Front Lines,” in which she reviews her own life and the literary world “from the perspective of a writer, mom, professor, Midwesterner, and fan of reading.”

“No, Mama,” said my thre [...]

�Not that You Look Old�: On Later Motherhood

wrbblog@wcwonline.org — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100

By Elizabeth Gregory for WOMEN = BOOKS

Like quite a few people I know, I had my first child in my late thirties—39 to be exact. My maternal grandmother had a child at 39, too, but that girl was her eighth baby and her last.

This difference summed up for me the change that had occurred in two generations, when I started writing a book about the new later motherhood—its causes and effects, personal and social. Where [...]