Women's Review of Books - 2020 Issues
January/February 2020
Jennifer Baumgardner, Women's Review of Books editor in chief, gives a preview of what's in the current issue:
Women's Review of Books issues are now available for purchase as digital downloads!
Questions and Answers Found Her
Interview with Florence Howe By Jennifer Baumgardner
XX-Istentialist Females By Andrea Long Chu
Reviewed by Madeleine Monson-Rosen
Cage the Elephant Uproarious: How Feminists and Other Subversive Comics Speak Truth By Cynthia and Julie Willett
Reviewed by Maeve Higgins
Duty to Repair Love WITH Accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse By Aishah Shahidah Simmons
Reviewed by Jamia Wilson
Pleasure in Times of Darkness A Death in Harlem By Karla FC Holloway; Side Chick Nation By Aya de León
Reviewed by Rochelle Spencer
Poetry Pink Etiquette By Leslie McGrath; Not in this Lifetime By Jo-Ann Mort: COMMENTARY by Katha Pollitt
Woman as subject. Discuss. Topics of Conversation By Miranda Popkey
Reviewed by Hagar Scher
The Image Making Comics By Lynda Barry
Reviewed by Anastasia Higginbotham
The Great Suppression For the Love of Men: A New Vision of Mindful Masculinity By Liz Plank
Reviewed by Carol Blair
Flux Factory Three Poems By Hannah Sullivan
Reviewed by Laurie Stone
Found in Translation Me & Other Writing By Marguerite Duras; Made in Saturn By Rita Indiana
Reviewed by Lindsay Semel
A Thousand Words The Shadow King By Maaza Mengiste
Reviewed by Naomi Elias
Survival Weather By Jenny Offill
Reviewed by Erica Jong
She Said Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung By Nina MacLaughlin
Reviewed by Noelle McManus
Blurred Lines My Dark Vanessa By Kate Elizabeth Russell
Reviewed by Kimberly Cutter
Code Red Uncanny Valley By Anna Wiener
Reviewed by Jacqueline Zeisloft
More Q&A The Writer’s Writer Questions and Answers with Michelle Tea By Kait Heacock
March/April 2020
Walking on Eggshells Barn 8 By Deb Olin Unferth
Reviewed by Maeve Higgins
Ghostwriter Afterlife By Julia Alvarez
Reviewed by Cleyvis Natera
Live Wires Janis: Her Life and Music By Holly George- Warren; Blood: A Memoir By Allison Moorer
Reviewed by Lauren Turner
Questions and Answers Wherefore the Independent Bookstore; interview with Hannah Oliver depp, owner of Loyalty Bookstore, Washington D.C.
By Jennifer Baumgardner and Jacqueline Zeisloft
An Unfamiliar Species My Autobiography of Carson McCullers By Jenn Shapland
Reviewed by Céillie Clark-Keane
It’s Complicated Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote By Ellen Carol DuBois
Reviewed by Lori D. Ginzberg
Poetry By Meg Yardley, Rita Mae Reese, Marion Brown, Sally Bliumis-Dunn, Noelle McManus, and Sarah Metcalf
Commentary By Katha Pollitt
Stein Way The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Illustrated By Gertrude Stein; illustrations by Maira Kalman
Interview by Tahneer Oksman
One Under the Other Subduction By Kristen Millares Young
Reviewed by Kait Heacock
Photography Traces of War Photos by Maryam Ashrafi
Commentary By Ellen Feldman
Cohog Wild Yale Needs Women: How the First Group of Girls Rewrote the Rules of an Ivy League Giant By Anne Gardiner Perkins
Reviewed by Susan B. Marine
Influencer Machines in the Head By Anna Kavan
Reviewed by Jessica Jernigan
Marginalia Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning By Cathy Park Hong
Reviewed by Jisu Kim
Middle-Aged Wasteland Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis By Ada Calhoun
Reviewed by Jessica Baumgardner
Burning Questions Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot By Mikki Kendall
Reviewed by LaToya Council
On the Nightstand Julia Alvarez on Stack Hierarchies, Scheherezade, and Reading with No Strings Attached
May/June 2020
Jennifer Baumgardner, Women's Review of Books editor in chief, gives a preview of what's in the current issue:
Tropeless Fiebre Tropical By Juli Delgado Lopera
Reviewed by Nino Testa
Darkness Visible Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency By Olivia Laing Reviewed by Laurie Stone
The Eye Beauty By Christina Chiu Reviewed by Heather Hewett
Pure Guts Four by Four By Sara Mesa, translated by Katie Whittemore Reviewed by Noelle McManus
Cartoon At the Baths By Anna Christine
Class Dismissed Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University By Matt Brim
Reviewed by Nino Testa
Women Reading The Toni Morrison Book Club By Juda Bennett, Winnifred Brown-Glaude, Cassandra Jackson, and Piper Kendrix Williams; March Sisters By Kate Bolick, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Jane Smiley; The Lost Chapters, Finding Recovery & Renewal One Book at a Time By Leslie Schwartz; Why Women Read Fiction By Helen Taylor; Unfinished Business, Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader By Vivian Gornick
Reviewed by Linda Simon
Field Notes the Mean(ing)s of Production By Jacqueline Zeisloft
Women’s Work Climate Justice: Hope, Resilience, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future By Mary Robinson; Gender and Climate Change: Impacts, Science, Policy By Joane Nagel
Reviewed by Judith Chelius Stark
Mirror Image The Exhibition of Persephone Q By Jessi Jezewska Stevens
Reviewed by Noelle McManus
Poetry By Rachel Blau DuPlessis,
Commentary By Katha Pollitt
Write to Life Choice Words: Writers on Abortion Edited by Annie Finch
Reviewed by Catharine R. Stimpson
Love and Death Boys of Alabama By Genevieve Hudson
Reviewed by Kait Heacock
A PhD in Survival Degrees of Difference: Reflections of Women of Color on Graduate School Edited by Kimberly D. McKee and Denise A. Delgado
Reviewed by Carolyn Choi
Listen Up The Epic of Girlhood An essay by Margaret Morganroth Gullette
Notes from the Front Distance Learning By Kayla Bert, Lola Blackman, Charis Caputo, Noelle McManus, and Priyanka Voruganti
On the Nightstand Roya Marsh on: Black Girl Magic, Knock-Knock Jokes, and Reading with Students in Mind
July/August 2020
Just Friends Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close By Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman
Reviewed by Grace Ebert
The Royal Vagina The Mirror and the Light By Hilary Mantel
Reviewed by Charis Caputo
Reviewed by Kathleen Rooney
The White Mouse Code Name Hélène By Ariel Lawhon
Reviewed by Valerie Miner
Alone Together Bezoar and Other Unsettling Stories By Guadalupe Nettel
Reviewed by Lindsay Semel
Beginnings and Ends We Had No Rules: Stories By Corinne Manning
Reviewed by Kait Heacock
Out of Sight The Death of Vivek Oji By Akwaeke Emezi
Reviewed by Noelle McManus
Comic Knowledge is Power By Anastasia Higginbotham
Commentary By Jennifer Baumgardner
Transing Gender Female Husbands: A Trans History By Jen Manion
Reviewed by James Yukiko Mulder
Essay-Notes from the Pause By Laurie Stone
Stuff and its Discontents Things Worth Keeping: The Value of Attachment in a Disposable World By Christine Harold
Reviewed by Lydia Pyne
Why We Write Throwing a Sheet Over the Ghost By Cooper Lee Bombardier
Poetry By Marilyn Hacker and Kim Addonizio
Listen Up In Praise of Shelfies By Leora Tanenbaum
On the Nightstand Wayétu Moore on What She’s Been Reading
September/October 2020
Jennifer Baumgardner, Women's Review of Books editor in chief, gives a preview of what's in the current issue:
Saved Transcendent Kingdom By Yaa Gyasi
Reviewed by Bridgett M. Davis
The Art of Passing The Vanishing Half By Brit Bennett
Reviewed by Jasmine M. Sanders
Tree of Life These Ghosts Are Family By Maisy Card
Reviewed by Taylor Dews
Escapology A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery and Resistance By Stella Abasa Dadzie
Reviewed by K. Avvirin Gray
Material We Want Our Bodies Back: Poems By Jessica Care Moore
Reviewed by Osarugue Otebele
Black Girls in Process Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower By Brittney Cooper
Reviewed by Angel Boulware
Poetry By Emily Gordon
Commentary By Katha Pollitt
Television "I May Destroy You" from A Gaze in the #MeToo Mirror By Michaela Coel
Reviewed by Kovie Biakolo
Human Supernova Luster By Raven Leilani
Reviewed by Rebecca Saltzman
Tech? No. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism By Safiya Umoja Noble
Reviewed by Kalani Johnson
Venus Envy Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia By Sabrina Strings
Reviewed by Jochebed Cadet
Scrutinized, But Never Seen Such a Fun Age By Kiley Reid
Reviewed by Savanna Ramsey
Rock and a Hard Place Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll By Maureen Mahon
Reviewed by Briana N. Spivey
Long Live the Black Diamond Queens (with playlist inspired by Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll) by Charis Caputo
Space Invaders Thick: And Other Essays By Tressie McMillan Cottom
Reviewed by Danielle Koonce
Just Who Is This "Us"? Just Us: An American Conversation By Claudia Rankine
Reviewed by Kim Mayo
Listen Up "Zoom" An Essay By Laurie Stone
November/December 2020
Jennifer Baumgardner, Women's Review of Books editor in chief, gives a preview of what's in the current issue:
Crime Wave Feminism The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration By Aya Gruber
Reviewed by Charis Caputo
Personal Jesus The Secret Lives of Church Ladies By Deesha Philyaw
Reviewed by Mariam I. Williams
Plathology Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom: A Story By Sylvia Plath; Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath By Heather Clark
Reviewed by Lisa Mullenneaux
Interview Kill Thrill: An Interview With Crime Author Emily Schultz By Kait Heacock
Pamela's House Funeral Diva By Pamela Sneed
Reviewed by Rachel Levitsky
Pulling Out the Sutures Places I’ve Taken My Body By Molly McCully Brown
Reviewed by Noelle McManus
Poetry By Molly Peacock
Commentary By Katha Pollitt
WRB Gift Guide Book Ideas for Corona-mas and Pandemukah
Strike Force Feminist International: How to Change Everything By Verónica Gago, Translated By Liz Mason-Deese
Reviewed by Laura V. Eley
De-Petrification Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country By Cristina Rivera Garza, Translated By Sarah Booker
Reviewed by Lindsay Semel
Poetry By Kim Addonizio
Meh-Too The League of Super Feminists By Mirion Malle, Translated by Aleshia Jensen
Reviewed by Amy Watkin
Complex Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto By Legacy Russell
Reviewed by Hanne Blank
Creature Discomforts Crushing It By Jennifer Knox
Reviewed by Natalia Conte
Black Magic The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games By Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
Reviewed by Chimene Ntakarutimana
Schrödinger's Author My Favorite Girlfriend Was a French Bulldog By Legna Rodríguez Iglesias, Translated by Megan McDowell
Reviewed by Rebecca Saltzman
The Poetesses Lyrical Strains: Liberalism and Women’s Poetry in Nineteenth-Century America By Elissa Zellinger
Reviewed by Kirun Kapur
Listen Up Postcard From Now, SEPTEMBER 29, 2020 By Laurie Stone
Bonus Op-Ed (Not Part of Issue) The Toobin Thing By Laurie Stone
The Women's Review of Books receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
