Women's Review of Books - 2016 Issues
January/February 2016
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Building Radical Bridges
Florynce “Flo” Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical By Sherie M. Randolph
Reviewed by Benita Roth
The Woman You've Never Heard of Who's The Reason You Practice Yoga
The Goddess Pose: The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West By Michelle Goldberg
Reviewed by Heather Hewett
The Mess They Leave Behind
Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham By Emily Bingham
Reviewed by Carla Kaplan
Puerto Rican, New Yorker, Latina
Becoming Julia de Burgos: The Making of a Puerto Rican Icon By Vanessa Pérez Rosario
Reviewed by Lorgia García Peña
Lost and Found
M Train By Patti Smith
Reviewed by Lisa L. Moore
Becoming One of Them
The Lioness in Winter: Writing an Old Woman’s Life By Ann Burack-Weiss
Reviewed by Ruth Ray Karpen
Are Scientists Human?
The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science is Still a Boys’ Club By Eileen Pollack
Reviewed by Allie Rubin
Photography
Images of Transition
Photography by Claudine Doury and Commentary by Marie-Christine Guyot
Translated by Ellen Feldman. Click here for the Commentary in French.
Disintegrations and Transformations
Two Faint Lines in the Violet By Lissa Kiernan
Bloom in Reverse By Teresa Leo
Beauty Mark By Suzanne Cleary
Reviewed by Judith Vollmer
Rewilding
The Wolf Border By Sarah Hall
Reviewed by Valerie Miner
Field Notes
A Novel in Verse with the Strengths of Each By Robin Becker
Poetry
By Lauren K. Alleyne
Spanning Class and Country
The Story of My Teeth By Valeria Luiselli, translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
Reviewed by Martha Gies
Revealing Ourselves to Ourselves
A House of My Own: Stories from My Life By Sandra Cisneros
Reviewed by Miroslava Chávez-García
Capacious Feminism
Revolutionizing Expectations: Women’s Organizations, Feminism and American Politics 1965-1980 By Melissa Estes Blair
Watching Women’s Liberation 1970: Feminism’s Pivotal Year on the Network News By Bonnie Dow
Reviewed by Amy Kesselman
Keep It Real
Falling in Love with Hominids By Nalo Hopkinson
Reviewed by Rochelle Spencer
The Age of Curie
Making Marie Curie: Intellectual Property and Celebrity Culture in an Age of Information By Eva Hemmungs Wirten
Reviewed by Sally Gregory Kohlstedt
Women's Review of Books issues are now available for purchase as digital downloads!
March/April 2016
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Women As Symbol and Reality
Kabul Carnival: Gender Politics in Postwar Afghanistan By Julie Billaud
Reviewed by Jennifer G. Mathers
One in Two, Two in One
The Story of the Lost Child By Elena Ferrante
Reviewed by Lisa Mullenneaux
"Moses Married a Colored Woman"
The Fight for Interracial Marriage Rights in Antebellum Massachusetts By Amber D. Moulton
Reviewed by Sandra F. VanBurkleo
Both Victims and Perpetrators
Addicted. Pregnant. Poor. By Kelly Ray Knight
Reviewed by Andrea Grimes
Cartoon
In Reference To
By Whit Taylor
Good Reads
Unconventional Characters
By Trish Crapo
Poetry
By Jayne Benjullan
Reviewed by Jennifer G. Mathers
To the Reader in Chief
Some of our favorite feminists recommend books for the next US president’s reading list
By Alicia Ostriker, AnaLouise Keating, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Callie Crossley, Courtney E. Martin, Ellen Feldman, Jennifer Camper, Kate Clinton, Katie Grover, Layli Maparyan, Yi-Chun Tricia Lin, Marjorie Agosin, Martha Nichols, Moya Bailey, Robin Becker, and Rochelle Ruthchild
Illustrations by Jennifer Camper
Stepford Wives and Sexbots
My Fair Ladies: Female Robots, Androids, and Other Artificial Eves By Julie Wosk
Reviewed by Madeleine Monson-Rosen
Singing for the Revolution
A Radical Life in Song: A Memoir By Ronnie Gilbert
Reviewed by Alix Dobkin
New Chinese Poetry
Something Crosses My Mind By Wang Xiaoni, translated by Eleanor Goodman
Salsa By Hsia Yü, translated by Steve Bradbury
Reviewed by Marthine Satris
The Politics of Forgetting - And Remembering
Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women Edited by Mia Bay, Farah J. Griffin, Martha S. Jones, and Barbara D. Savage
Reviewed by Kellie Carter Jackson
The History of Violence
The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America By Sarah Deer
Reviewed by Jody Raphael
Women's Review of Books issues are now available for purchase as digital downloads!
May/June 2016
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Gifts from the Goddess of Jurisprudence
Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World By Linda Hirshman
Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Reviewed by Ruthann Robson
Radical Mamas
Mamas of Dada: Women of the European Avant-GardeBy Paula K. Kamenish
Reviewed by Irene Gammel
Achievement. Invulnerability. Comportment
Negroland By Margo Jefferson; Oreo By Fran Ross
Reviewed by Marilyn Richardson
The Interminable Abortion Wars
Abortion After Roe By Johanna Schoen;
After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion DebateBy Mary Ziegler
Reviewed by Rickie Solinger
Attention Must Be Paid
On Becoming a Teen Mom: Life Before Pregnancy
By Mary Patrice Erdmans and Timothy Black; System Kids: Adolescent Mothers and the Politics of Regulation
By Lauren J. Silver
Reviewed by Ruth Sidel
Mental Illness Then And Now
White Matter: A Memoir of Family and Medicine
By Janet Sternburg; The Last Asylum: A History of Madness in Our Times
By Barbara Taylor
Reviewed by Katherine Hayes
Photography Photos Like Jazz: Twenty-First Century Street Photography
By Ellen Feldman
Possessed By Demons
The Strange Case of Ermine de Reims: A Medieval Woman Between Demons and Saints
By Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski
Reviewed by Christina Stern
Claiming An Identity
The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle
By Lillian Faderman
Reviewed by Audrey Bilger
Poetry
By Dina Coe
Field Notes Across The Generations
By Robin Becker
Searching For Home
Fanny Says By Nickole Brown; My Crooked House By Teresa Carson; The Republics
By Nathalie Handal
Reviewed by Carol Bere
Delayed, But Not Forgotten
In Certain Circles
By Elizabeth Harrower
Reviewed by Jessica Jernigan
Complacency Or Peril
The Complete Stories
By Clarice Lispector, translated by Katrina Dobson, edited by Benjamin Moser
Reviewed by Marguerite Itamar Harrison
Plan A And Plan B
Love’s Promises: How Formal and Informal Contracts Shape All Kinds of Families
By Martha Ertman
Reviewed by Dana Rudolph
Women's Review of Books issues are now available for purchase as digital downloads!
July/August 2016
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From Scandal to Recovery
Lady Byron and Her Daughters By Julia Markus
Reviewed by Pamela S. Bromberg
Hair
Dressing for the Culture Wars: Style and the Politics of Self-Presentation in the 1960s and 1970s By Betty Luther Hillman
Reviewed by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
Feminism and Terrorism
Death in the Shape of a Young Girl: Women's Political Violence in the Red Army Faction By Patricia Melzer;
After the Red Army Faction: Gender, Culture, and Militancy By Charity Scribner
Reviewed by Elizabeth Heineman
An Avant-Garde Life
Edgewise: A Picture of Cookie Mueller By Chloé Griffin
Reviewed by An Paenhuysen
The Cult of Forbidden Thoughts
The Big Green Tent By Ludmila Ulitskaya, translated by Polly Gannon Reviewed
by Beth Holmgren
Racism, Sexism, and Nursing
Nursing Civil Rights: Gender and Race in the Army Nurse Corps By Charissa J. Threat
Reviewed by Jane E. Schultz
The Speech of the Dispossessed
Women in Dark Times By Jacqueline Rose
Reviewed by Rebecca Steinitz
Good Reads Unraveling By Trish Crapo
Poetry By Angela Consolo Mankiewicz
Cartoon By A.K. Summers
Women in Print
The Feminist Bookstore Movement: Lesbian Antiracism and Feminist Accountability By Kristen Hogan
Reviewed by Susanna J. Sturgis
A Rediscovered Poet for our Time
Anything that Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet By Terese Svoboda
Reviewed by Margaret Randall
Constructing Identity up Against a Wall
Bitter Almonds By Lilas Taha;
The Blue Between Sky and Water By Susan Abulhawa;
A Curious Land By Susan Darraj;
Ali and His Russian Mother By Alexandra Chreiteh, translated by Michelle Hartman
Reviewed by M. Lynx Qualey
Conocimiento Lunar / Lunar Knowledge
Light in the Dark / Luz en lo oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality By Gloria Anzald, edited by AnaLouise Keating
Reviewed by Romana Radlwimmer
Just the Facts
Galileo's Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science By Alice Dreger
Reviewed by E.J. Graff
Women's Review of Books issues are now available for purchase as digital downloads!
September/October 2016
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Unfun Feminism
We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to Covergirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement By Andi Zeisler
Reviewed by Paula Kamen, Illustrations by Jennifer Camper
A Spirit Leader
Maya Angelou: Adventurous Spirit By Linda Wagner-Martin
Reviewed by Farah Jasmine Griffin
The Sidewalk Ballet
Becoming Jane Jacobs by Peter L. Laurence
Reviewed by Renée Loth
Changing Women’s Minds
This Book Is an Action: Feminist Print Culture and Activist Aesthetics By Jaime Harker and Cecilia Konchar Farr
Reviewed by Judith Kegan Gardiner
Scar Tissue
The Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories, and the Bangladesh War of 1971 By Nayanika Mookerjee
Reviewed by Ritu Menon
Field Notes
A Formal Feeling Comes By Robin Becker
Photography
Embracing the Surreal By Brooke Burns, Photos By Maia Flore
Philosophy and Action
Senses of the Subject By Judith Butler;
Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly By Judith Butler
Reviewed by Michele M. Moody-Adams
Poetry of the Borderland
A Crown for Gumecindo By Laurie Ann Guerrero; Aguacamino/Waterpath By Rossy Evelin Lima; Blood, Sugar, Canto By ire’ne lara silva; The Ones Santa Anna Sold By Raquel Valle-Sentíes
Reviewed by Norma E. Cantú
Poetry By Mary Ann Donnelly
Aging in the Twenty-First Century
They May Not Mean To, But They Do By Cathleen Schine
Reviewed by Valerie Miner
The Hubbub of Life The Japanese Lover
By Isabel Allende, translated by Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson
Reviewed by Eileen Mary O’Connor
Putin Does Not Believe in Queers
Lesbian Lives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia By Francesca Stella
Reviewed by Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild
Redemption or Salvation
Virgin Nation: Sexual Purity and American Adolescence By Sarah Moslener;
Rescuing Jesus: How People of Color, Women, and Queer Christians are Reclaiming Evangelicalism By Deborah Jian Lee
Reviewed by Monique Moultrie
Wait All
The Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent NationBy Rebecca Traister
Reviewed by E. Kay Trimberger
Women's Review of Books issues are now available for purchase as digital downloads!
November/December 2016
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"Muslimwomen," Journalists and scholars
Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World By Katherine Zoepf
Reviewed by Lila Abu-Lughod
How do you Solve a Problem Like Svetlana?
Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva By Rosemary Sullivan
Reviewed by Lesley Rimmel
When is a Girl not a Girl?
Sex Testing: Gender Policing in Women’s Sports By Lindsay Parks Pieper
Reviewed by Laura Pappano
The Gentle Penitentiary
Liberty’s Prisoners, Carceral Culture in Early America By Jen Manion
Reviewed by Martha Saxton
Women Conservatives
Tea Party Women: Mama Grizzlies, Grassroots Leaders, and the Changing Face of the American Right By Melissa Deckman
Reviewed by Abby Scher
The Dancer from the Dance
The Naked Result: How Exotic Dance Became Big Business By Jessica Berson
Reviewed Lauri Umansky
The Difficulty of Solidarity
Striking Beauties: Women Apparel Workers in the US South, 1930-2000 By Michelle Haberland
Reviewed by Priscilla Murolo
Cartoon By Tara Madison Avery
Good Reads Bad Choices By Trish Crapo
Unreconciled
Chasing Ghosts: A Memoir of a Father, Gone to War By Louise DeSalvo; Mysteries of Love and Grief: Reflections on a Plainswoman’s Life By Sandra Scofield; The Latter Days: A Memoir By Judith Freeman
Reviewed by Rebecca Hussey
The Tragedy in the Breakfast Nook
This Angel on My Chest: Stories By Leslie Pietrzyk The Grass Labyrinth: Stories By Charlotte Holmes
Reviewed by Kelly Cherry
Translation and Retranslation
Good on Paper By Rachel Cantor Ways to Disappear By Idra Novey
Reviewed by Michelle Bailat-Jones
Poetry By Darla Himeles
Construction work
Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith Edited by Alethia Jones and Virginia Eubanks, with Barbara Smith
Reviewed by A.J. Verdelle
Kids Today
Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape By Peggy Orenstein; American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers By Nancy Jo Sales
Reviewed by Nancy Jainchill
Women's Review of Books issues are now available for purchase as digital downloads!
The Women's Review of Books receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.