The Women’s Review of Books Vol. XX, No. 5 February 2003 74035 $4.00

I In This Issue © Anthony Barboza

I Inside this issue is our fifteenth annual supplement featuring books rec- ommended by our advertisers for aca- demic course adoption. It goes without saying that these pages include only a few of the large and small presses whose lists abound in books for Women’s Studies—and that many of the books they offer will appeal as strongly to general readers as to an academic audience. Happy reading!

I Unable to find any memoirs by tran- sracially adopted children, Catherine McKinley wrote her own: E.J. Graff reviews The Book of Sarahs: A Family in Parts,p.5.

I Two extraordinary women leaders encourage us to believe that another world is possible: Deborah Valenze reads Madam Prime Minister, the autobi- Catherine McKinley, author of The Book of Sarahs. ography of ’s Gro Harlem Brundtland, p. 4, and Amy Edelstein interviews Ireland’s , p. 8.

I Long before Oprah, African Free and fair Americans were forming their own by Nan Levinson book clubs and reading groups: Gabrielle Foreman reviews Elizabeth Free for All: Liberty in America Today by Wendy Kaminer. McHenry’s fascinating Forgotten Readers: Boston: Beacon Press, 2002, 235 pp., $16.00 paper. Recovering the Lost History of African I American Literary Societies,p.19. endy Kaminer’s philosophy could less random than it seems; liberties interlock, I “Through the life of one woman, be summed up as “fair is fair.” As so that, for instance, the speech rights of a social critic and lawyer focusing school kids have something to do with the Naked in the Promised Land captures the W on civil liberties and criminal justice, she has religious rights of evangelicals and Wiccans, history of an era,” writes Judith a lot to say about fairness and the difficulty even though they may not seem to at first Barrington in a review of lesbian histo- of distributing it, well, fairly. blush. It’s the second blush that interests rian Lillian Faderman’s surprising new In Free for All, a collection of about 45 Kaminer and gives the book consequence. memoir, p. 16. essays written over the past five years, she The pieces here originally appeared in The I and more... covers a raft of controversies, including American Prospect (where Kaminer is a senior media violence, anti-abortion protest, sur- correspondent), Dissent, Free Inquiry and a few veillance, child , flag burning, other periodicals. If that seems like preaching identity politics, affirmative action, assisted to the choir, one of Kaminer’s strengths is suicide, gay , immigration laws, cam- documenting the dissent in the choir about paign finance reform, witchcraft, prosecutor- just how free inquiry (and much else) should ial abuse, victims’ rights, fathers’ rights, reli- be. Through current events, controversies gious rights and a slew of free speech dust- and legal decisions, she examines what the PRINTED IN THE USA ups. I’ve probably missed a few, but the list is continued on page three The Women’s Review Contents of Books Wellesley College Center for Research on Women 1 Nan Levinson I Free for All: Liberty in America Today by Wendy Kaminer Wellesley, MA 02481 (781) 283-2087/ (888) 283-8044 4 Deborah Valenze I Madam Prime Minister: A Life in Power and Politics by Gro Harlem Brundtland www.wellesley.edu/WomensReview Volume XX, No. 5 5 E. J. Graff I The Book of Sarahs: A Family in Parts by Catherine E. McKinley February 2003

6 Gail Bederman I Talk About Sex: The Battles Over in the United States EDITOR IN CHIEF: Linda Gardiner by Janice M. Irvine; Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance PRODUCTION EDITOR: Amanda Nash by Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Martha Nichols, Jan Zita Grover 7 Rochelle G. Ruthchild I Girl with Two Landscapes: The Wartime Diary of Lena Jedwab, 1941-1945 POETRY EDITOR: Robin Becker by Lena Jedwab Rozenberg ADVERTISING MANAGER: Anita D. McClellan OFFICE MANAGER: Nancy Wechsler 8 Amy Edelstein I THINK GLOBALLY, ACT GLOBALLY: Mary Robinson puts human rights on EDITORIAL BOARD: Margaret Andersen I everyone’s agenda Robin Becker I Claudia M. Christie I Marsha Darling I Anne Fausto-Sterling I 12 Sherri Broder I Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption by Barbara Melosh Carol Gilligan I Sandra Harding I Nancy Hartsock I Carolyn Heilbrun I Evelyn Fox 13 Jan Zita Grover I Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture edited by Andrew Kimbrell; Keller I Jean Baker Miller I Ruth Perry I Peggy Phelan I Helene Vivienne Wenzel Chez Panisse Fruit by Alice Waters EDITORIAL POLICY: 14 Kimberly Shearer Palmer I Womansword: What Japanese Words Say About Women by Kittredge Cherry The Women’s Review of Books is feminist but not restricted to any one conception of feminism; 15 Lisa Marcus I Conquering Infertility: Dr. Alice Domar’s Mind/Body Guide to Enhancing Fertility all writing that is neither sexist, racist, homo- and Coping with Infertility by Alice Domar and Alice Lesch Kelly phobic, nor otherwise discriminatory will be welcome. We seek to represent the widest 16 Judith Barrington I Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir by Lillian Faderman possible range of feminist perspectives both in the books reviewed and in the content of 17 Christine Froula I Analyzing Freud: Letters of H.D., Bryher and Their Circle edited by the reviews. We believe that no one of us, alone or in a group, can speak for feminism, Susan Stanford Friedman or women, as such; all of our thinking and writing takes place in a specific political, 18 Julia Epstein I Publicity’s Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy by Jodi Dean social, ethnic and sexual context, and a responsible review periodical should reflect 19 Gabrielle Foreman I Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary and further that diversity. The Women’s Review Societies by Elizabeth McHenry takes no editorial stance; all the views expressed in it represent the opinion of the 20 Helen Zia I The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World edited by individual authors. Alison H. Deming and Lauret E. Savoy ADVERTISING POLICY: The Women’s Review accepts both display and 21 Paisley Currah I How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States classified advertising. Classified rates are by Joanne Meyerowitz $1.15 per word, with a ten word minimum. The base rate for display ads is $53 per col- I umn inch; for more information on rates and 21 Marcia Falk Two Poems available discounts, call or write to the adver- tising manager. The Women’s Review will not 22 Books Received accept advertising which is clearly inappropri- ate to the goals of a feminist publication; however, as we are unable to investigate the accuracy of claims made by our advertisers, publication of an advertisement does not rep- Contributors resent endorsement by The Women’s Review. Advertising inquiries: call 781-283-2560. JUDITH BARRINGTON’s most recent book, Lifesaving: A Memoir, was the winner of the Lambda Book Award and a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the art of the memoir. She is also the author of Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art and two collections of The Women’s Review of Books (ISSN #0738- poetry. Her web site is www.judithbarrington.com. 1433) is published monthly except August by GAIL BEDERMAN, the author of Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the US, 1877-1917, teaches US history at the The Women’s Review, Inc., 828 Washington University of Notre Dame. She is working on two projects: a biography of the nineteenth-century New York abortionist Madame Restell, and Street, Wellesley, MA 02481. Annual subscrip- another book provisionally entitled Sex Radicalism, Malthusianism, and ‘Reproductive Rights’ in England and the US, 1793-1831 (forthcoming, University tions are $27.00 for individuals and $47.00 for of Chicago Press). institutions. Overseas postage fees are an SHERRI BRODER is a US social historian. Her book Tramps, Unfit Mothers, and Neglected Children: Negotiating the Family in Late Nineteenth-Century additional $20.00 airmail or $5.00 surface mail Philadelphia was published recently by the University of Pennsylvania Press. to all countries outside the US. Back issues are PAISLEY CURRAH, associate professor of political science and coordinator of the women’s studies program at Brooklyn College of the City available for $4.00 per copy. Please allow 6-8 University of New York, is co-editing, with Richard M. 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MARCIA FALK’s books include The Song of Songs: A New Translation and Interpretation and The Book of Blessings, a feminist re-creation of The Women’s Review of Books is a project of the Jewish prayer. The Spectacular Difference, a volume of her translations of the Hebrew poet Zelda, is forthcoming in 2003 from Hebrew Union Wellesley College Center for Research on College Press. Women. As an autonomous publication it has its own editorial board and board of directors, GABRIELLE FOREMAN teaches literature at Occidental College in Los Angeles though she is presently away writing about the narrative who set policy with regard to its editorial, strategies of nineteenth-century African-American and anti-slavery authors. She misses sunshine, a full paycheck, her fabulous friends and col- leagues and the best inexpensive food in the country. financial and organizational character. CHRISTINE FROULA, professor of English, comparative literary studies and gender studies at Northwestern University, has published The Women’s Review is distributed by Total Modernism’s Body: Sex, Culture, and Joyce (1996), and works on modernist literature, feminism and contemporary theory. She is completing a book Circulation, New York City, NY; Ingram, titled Virginia Woolf: Toward New Lands, New Civilizations. Nashville, TN; and Armadillo Trading, Culver City, CA. All other distribution is handled E. J. GRAFF, a visiting scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center, is the author of What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution and a contributing editor at The American Prospect and Out magazine. directly by The Women’s Review. JAN ZITA GROVER is program coordinator of Harmony Club, a social, recreational and educational center for people with serious mental ill- The contents of nesses in Duluth, MN. She and members cook each evening for 25 and offer luncheons and high teas to the public. The Women’s Review of Books are copy- NAN LEVINSON writes about First Amendment issues and teaches at Tufts University. Her book, Outspoken: Free Speech Stories, will be right ©2003. All published this year. rights reserved; LISA MARCUS teaches English and women’s studies at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. reprint by permis- KIMBERLY SHEARER PALMER is a graduate student studying public policy at the University of Chicago. Last year, as a Henry Luce sion only. Scholar, she was a staff writer for the Asahi Shimbun/International Herald Tribune in Tokyo. ROCHELLE G. RUTHCHILD teaches in the MA Program of the Union Institute and University, based at Vermont College. She is an asso- ciate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard, and is working on a book about the pre-Revolutionary feminist move- ment in Russia. DEBORAH VALENZE is professor of history at Barnard College. She is the author of Prophetic Sons and Daughters: Female Preaching in Industrial England (Princeton, 1985) and The First Industrial Woman (Oxford, 1995). She is at work on a book on the social relations of money in eighteenth- century Britain. HELEN ZIA is a contributing editor to Ms. Magazine. She is the author of Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000) and My Country Versus Me (Hyperion, 2002). 2 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 Free and fair heads of state who “apologize” for the sameness to the disputes they cover, and if crimes of their predecessors. “It’s easy to we’ve heard her arguments before, they’re continued from p.1 atone for someone else’s sins,” she writes. still good arguments and to the point. It’s “Vicarious apologies are cheap thrills for easy to understand why a journalist would rights we Americans claim for ourselves the sanctimonious.” want to give her work a longer shelf life mean, especially when those rights clash, Fifth, just because some people abuse a than a magazine or newspaper affords, but as she believes they frequently do. right, it shouldn’t be denied to all people. the traits that makes journalism engag- “Civil liberties often conflict with civil What’s noteworthy about this point is that ing—timeliness, novelty, immediacy— rights, as liberty inevitably conflicts with it comes in an essay in which Kaminer make collections of this kind less so. In equality,” she writes in her introduction, argues that to recognize that the Second addition, republishing these essays lets her neatly summing up a central struggle of Amendment does indeed guarantee the off the hook from writing an extended our time. Since September 11, we’ve been right of individuals to own guns would be and fresh analysis—and God knows we told that the more pressing conflict is a practical step toward regulating them, could use some freshness from good between liberty and safety, but Kaminer hardly a popular liberal position. minds on the Left like Kaminer’s. is unconvinced. Not that safety doesn’t Wendy Kaminer Finally, all Americans have the same An author’s note to the two final, longer matter to her, but liberty matters too, and rights. This includes bigots, criminals, pieces about court stripping and prosecu- she believes that many newly enacted ends, no matter how laudable, will be com- fathers’ rights advocates, anti-abortion torial abuse addresses the limitations of measures undermine liberty without promised—but freedom is confusing, and protestors (all discussed here) and anyone recycling topical pieces. Written in 1999, enhancing safety. Americans, she says, are when theory bumps into reality, theory usu- else you may not happen to agree with. they were updated only slightly and left in too willing now to sacrifice freedom to ally loses out to self-interest or an idea of Those rights are supposed to be upheld the present tense to “convey the sense of fear, and that has derailed badly needed self-preservation. In political disputes, few by the legal system, and Kaminer appears urgency that civil libertarians felt before reforms in a number of areas, including minds, let alone hearts, are changed by evi- to put her faith (or maybe it’s her last September 11.” The America they portray immigration policy and the death penalty. dence; following one’s beliefs to their logical hope) in the judiciary. Yet she knows that is a dreary place as far as fairness goes, and The essays are organized by topic, conclusion can lead to mess and contradic- power gets misused all the time and that Kaminer makes it clear that conditions with the longest sections addressing the tion; and focusing on “preserving fair courts err and can be loath to admit it. have only gotten worse. She believes that First Amendment issues of free speech processes rather than obtaining particular “The Bill of Rights reflects the Founders’ we have been conned into thinking that and freedom of religion. Other sections results,” as she says civil libertarians do, will belief that the government could not be less freedom for someone else will make address privacy (the shortest, though pri- sooner or later tick off everyone who cares trusted to exercise its police powers fair- us safer. “What makes a civil libertarian is vacy promises to be the next civil lib bat- about a particular result. ly,” she reminds us. Elsewhere, though, the capacity to imagine yourself as the tleground), criminal justice, women’s Still, there are bedrock principles of she acknowledges that the state has often accused, not the accuser,” she writes. I’m rights and status, “anti-individualism,” justice that Kaminer returns to often. been an ally of those seeking social always uneasy with the implication that the which covers an array of repressive laws First, people should be free to speak their change, such as women’s rights advocates. electorate acts as it does because it doesn’t and policies, and the freedom versus minds. This means that the government This lands her in the lap of a liberal con- know what it’s getting itself into, but I sus- security debate. cannot play favorites among the messages tradiction: trust in the rule of law, but not pect that most Americans imagine them- It would be hard to come up with a or language it permits; that dissent is in the government that enforces it. selves as neither accused nor accuser. We civil libertarian—or pundit of any political okay, even patriotic; and that offensive- Contradictions aside (or are they cen- care about the freedoms we bump up stripe—who hasn’t weighed in on the last ness may be necessary. Embracing these tral?), Kaminer deserves credit for taking against, as Kaminer notes, but we choose of these, and Kaminer hits all the often- ideas leads Kaminer to support, or at least on the hard parts of freedom and for to imagine or see little beyond them. If, as rehearsed notes. She does it well, though, tolerate, the right to express some widely refusing to reduce the debate to partisan we’re told, we lost our innocence on and is particularly good at explaining legal reviled views, such as those of NAM- politics. Free for All is smart, tart, sensible September 11, it is this ease in turning issues clearly and showing why they mat- BLA, the North American Man Boy Love and feisty, but it is seldom surprising. That away that is gone. Kaminer, committed as ter. She also understands why they may Association. “If the First Amendment isn’t necessarily Kaminer’s fault; if there’s she is to looking injustice in the eye, might not seem to matter, admitting at one point only protected sensible speech,” she con- a sameness to these essays, there is also a say that that’s only fair. I that constitutional arguments about vibra- cludes after acknowledging her distaste tors (oh yes, their sale was outlawed in for NAMBLA’s philosophy, “we’d inhabit Alabama in 1998) flirt with self-parody, a very quiet nation indeed.” and at another that the abuses of manda- Second, the government should nei- tory sentencing are an old story. “Yet the ther interfere with nor promote religion. sentences are still in place, so the story still Kaminer is sympathetic to those who Cutting edge exploration of gender, race, and nation. needs to be told,” she insists. The tension want to practice their religion unencum- between liberty and safety wasn’t invented bered, but less so to advocates of “chari- on September 11, 2001, and these essays table choice” that channels federal money are strongest when they show how current for social service projects to religious injustices are rooted in continuing organizations. “Advocates of charitable inequities and abuses of power. choice...want only to obey God’s law, Kaminer’s ear is tuned to the ironies which is fair enough, so long as they GENDER those abuses create. In “When Congress don’t depend on Caesar’s money,” she Plays Doctor,” she begins by imagining observes. She is fond of noting that Congress considering a patients’ bill of mainstream religions are all for equality rights and turning to HMOs to say huffi- and tolerance as long as that applies only CULTURE ly, “Deny American citizens effective, to them and not to Moonies, the Nation lifesaving treatments or palliatives for of Islam, Scientologists, or fill in the pain? That’s our job.” There is little to blank with your idea of a cult—which Master’s Degree in An exciting interdisciplinary laugh about here, though, as she gives her another reason to oppose state Gender/Cultural Studies program that prepares describes recently enacted laws and poli- support of churches. As I write this, the ᮣ Graduate studies for students for doctoral cies that increase suffering. Among the president has just signed an executive women and men. programs as well as careers. most cruel is the federal crackdown on order on Equal Treatment for Charities Built on the dynamic use of marijuana for medical purposes. to make sure charitable choice happens. ᮣ Full- and part-time interaction women’s studies, One man convicted of growing and dis- The initiative will sanction discrimination studies. tributing it was gravely ill with AIDS, but in hiring, yet Bush has declared, “The African American studies, was barred from using the drug while days of discriminating against religious ᮣ Merit awards, teaching history, philosophy, awaiting trial. Too nauseated to absorb groups just because they are religious are assistantships, and sociology, English, his medication, he died before sentenc- coming to an end.” More proof that research assistantships economics, political ing, asphyxiated by his own vomit. “It is there are lots of ways to define fairness. available. science, education, and not hyperbole to suggest that the federal Third, everyone is entitled to due prosecution killed him,” Kaminer writes process in judicial proceedings, and the human services. with uncharacteristic choler. law must be clear about what it prohibits. For more information This makes Kaminer leery of some cre- ᮣ 617-521-2224 o be a civil libertarian is to be hyper- ative legal strategies, such as using RICO, ᮣ www.simmons.edu/graduate/gender_cultural bolic occasionally and paranoid a harsh anti-racketeering statute, to pros- T often; freedom is usually under ecute anti-abortion protestors, or stretch- Subscribe to Abafazi: the Simmons College Review attack in some way, and measures that ing the Americans with Disabilities Act of Women of African Descent 617.521.2257. undermine it are like a computer virus, to cover infertility. worming their way into the system, draining Fourth, people should not be found off resources and proving very hard to dis- guilty for the company they keep. lodge once in place. To combat this tenden- Kaminer maintains that guilt by associa- cy, Kaminer puts her faith in good evidence, tion is a central problem with RICO and intellectual and legal consistency, and fair with the arguments for reparations for processes. These are all essential in a demo- slavery that presume “inherited guilt.” cratic society—if the means are corrupt, the On the other hand, she is dismissive of 300 THE FENWAY BOSTON

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 3 © Håvard Bjelland, courtesy of courtesy © Håvard Bjelland, Passionate politician by Deborah Valenze B

Madam Prime Minister: A Life in Power and Politics e r g e n s

by Gro Harlem Brundtland. New York: Farrar, Straus T i d e n d e and Giroux, 2002, 485 pp., $35.00 hardcover. . I

ver the past year, banner photos Foremost is her trademark concept, “sus- of world leaders have reminded tainable development,” which greatly O me of that indomitable series in enhanced the vocabulary of global and Ms. magazine in the 1970s that featured development studies. As Chair of the scenes of boardrooms or summit meet- World Commission on Environment and ings of men only, repeating a querulous Development from 1983, Brundtland caption, “What’s missing in this picture?” added the combustible element of a moral Gro Harlem Brundtland. From Madam Prime Minister. Research by the White House Project has imperative to the notion that economic shown that in spite of recent gains made activity and demographic growth require a these memoirs is one that even (or, per- because they seem so central in explaining by women in politics, Sunday talk cogent plan of action. In 1987 the group haps, particularly) the American publish- who Gro Harlem became. Her life has shows—one of the most influential forms produced a report now legendary for its ers failed to grasp, judging from the been one sustained, optimistic drive for of media—feature women political lead- foresight, Our Common Future, which remarks on women in politics chosen for consensus, so obstacles like the special ers far less often than men. Since implored worldwide leadership to cooper- the dustjacket. Brundtland is really a mis- hazing that confronts women in politics September 11, it appears that we’ve been ate in curbing energy consumption, sionary for social democracy as a template appear incidentally in these pages. This offered putative reassurance in the shape attending to population problems and for a future world order; her identity as a has partly to do with Brundtland’s lack of of suits, some of them long past their sell- addressing poverty. woman is relevant to that role, but it is egotism: she never pontificates on the by dates. So what better time to ponder Brundtland’s historic accession to the only a subordinate piece. subjects of her victories. A lengthy list of the political career of Gro Harlem posts of Prime Minister and Party Leader As a historian of European women, I domestic policy reforms achieved on her Brundtland, former Prime Minister and of Norway in 1981 at the age of 41 made wanted to see what legacies Brundtland watch are catalogued only in a final chap- Labor Party Leader of Norway, who is her not only the first female to hold both claimed as her own. On that score, I was ter: schooling for six-year-olds, nursery now the Director General of the World positions, but also the youngest. After a satisfied immediately: the book opens school places for every child, the creation Health Organization? period of conservative government, she with Gro’s Swedish mother, who, on a of a Ministry of the Child, paid maternity Though some American readers may again served as Prime Minister from 1986 sailing trip with fellow members of a leaves of one year, and a stunning need to be reminded of who she is and to 1989 and 1990 to 1996. Through her socialist club in 1938, fell in love with a increase—from four to seventy percent— what she’s done, the contributions of tireless political work on every continent, Norwegian medical student. A passionate of men taking advantage of family leaves. “Gro” (as she is affectionately known in Brundtland put Norway on the map for and free-spirited “New Woman,” she mar- Some of her most caustic commen- Norway) to contemporary political life much of the Third World, not to mention ried him three months later, and gave taries slip in almost unannounced, such around the world are considerable. North America. The country became fixed birth to Gro in April, 1939. One year later, as her bold first encounter with Margaret in the global public’s mind as the home of Germany began its bombardment of Thatcher: a thriving population and a pristine land- Norway. Though her parents remained scape after she orchestrated the winning loyal to the cause of socialism, investing a I raised the theme of women in bid for the Winter Olympics, held at quarter of their inheritance in producing a politics. I asked what she was doing Lillehammer in 1994. Finally, from her first workers’ encyclopedia, their lives with the to increase the number of women job as a doctor, to the generous domestic baby Gro were determined by other, more in the British government. I policies introduced under her three min- pressing circumstances. Taken up with assumed that this was an area that istries and her courageous stances as resistance work, they left Gro and her she was as interested in as I was. Director General of the World Health brother with Gro’s Swedish grandmother, But instead she demurred. It was Organization, Brundtland has succeeded in a radical in her own right—she was asso- difficult to find qualified women spotlighting the medical and educational ciated with Alexandra Kollontai during for cabinet posts. There were only needs of women and children everywhere. her time as Soviet ambassador to Sweden. a few female Members of Even grandmother had her work as a Parliament from which to choose. part from a few beginning chap- solicitor to consider; the children, aged Very few women were qualified for ters, Madam Prime Minister offers four and three, spent nearly five months in Ministership. A mostly political recollections rather a children’s home outside Stockholm. I got the message. She was than a chronological account of Gro’s faint admission of childhood Prime Minister because she was the “Much more than the autobiography Brundtland’s career. Her irrepressible resentment at this wartime abandonment best. If other women were the best, of an extraordinary woman, this is the energy shows in the spontaneous style of represents one of the few clues that one they would certainly manage what story of a century of French history. this book, which she began within days might seize upon as indicative of what she had managed. (pp. 254-255) Sand’s Story of My Life is a delight to after leaving office in 1996. She offers us molded the young psyche of the future read.” –Germaine Brée a revealing image of her relationship with prime minister. We see that her extended Gro would explain her pursuit of gen- “Sand recounts her own saga with her husband Olav, who conspired with her family, all of them committed to high- der equity and social democracy as great gusto and unflinching honesty, to flee to their winter place in the country level political and medical work, raised her and without any kind of self-pity. This (a Norwegian inversion of the American’s to understand public service as her calling, The Brundtland family on splendid translation is a landmark summer cottage) immediately after she too. Perhaps the most memorable photo- July 31, 1974, the day Gro was achievement. It manages the feat of announced her decision to step down. graph in the book shows Gro, aged seven, appointed Minister of the Environ- being both scrupulously faithful to the Once their children and grandchildren solemnly marching in a children’s event ment. From Madam Prime Minister. original as well as highly readable.” had departed after a weekend together, for the Labor Party Progress Group –Gita May Olav presented her with a ream of blank behind Truls Gerhardsen, the son of the “A work which fully does Sand jus- paper. Her first volume was published in prime minister. Without question, she tice.” – Henri Peyre Norway a year later. quickly grasped that one must keep one’s As a woman with a unifying life mis- eyes on outer, not inner, concerns. Story of My Life: sion, Brundtland infuses her experiences This in itself leads the American read- The Autobiography of George Sand with a sense of public-mindedness, first er to ponder a chasm of historical and cul- A Group Translation edited by Thelma Jurgrau through her medical practice and later tural difference. Socialism, political 1168 pages; unabridged and with index through policies to insure improvement in activism, a hearty appreciation of the well- “, safety, equality, and dignity spring of nature, a sense of moral respon- $25.95 paper + $4.00 shipping of treatment in the broadest sense.” The sibility—these were the foundation stones (NY residents add 7% sales tax) building blocks derive largely from her of the kinder and gentler aspect of twen- ISBN 0-7914-0581-8 grounding in a northern European culture tieth-century history, now unfortunately State University of New York Press of state socialism. Time spent at difficult to discern anywhere but perhaps c/o CUP Services, PO Box 6525, Harvard’s School of Public Health, where in Scandinavia. Ithaca, NY 14851 she forged her own path to study the (607) 277-2211; Visa, MasterCard, importance of -feeding for mothers dwell upon these formative experi- American Express and children, helped to confirm a modern ences far beyond the proportion of feminist perspective. Yet the point of I space they take up in the memoirs 4 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 grounded in a Norwegian upbringing, exceptional at reporting unflinchingly on which blended basic egalitarianism with a the ins and outs of her complicated emo- sense of social responsibility. But her tions and experiences, offering complex readiness to extend this ideology to a truly In a WASP nest observations plainly phrased. She never global context distinguishes her from her shows a hint of sentimentality or self-pity, compatriots. As a woman, she was sup- by E. J. Graff and neither dramatizes nor downplays her plied with a double-sided perspective on feelings, her progress, her own or others’ politics; her ability to identify the The Book of Sarahs: A Family in Parts by Catherine E. McKinley. missteps or excesses. She examines the Norwegian agenda with that of the Third intimate shifts in feelings, thoughts and World was an intellectual and moral New York: Counterpoint, 2002, 292 pp., $24.00 hardcover. behavior clearly, steadily and unapologeti- achievement which has contributed to her cally, as if this story were impersonal. effectiveness as head of the World Health I McKinley’s conclusions are similarly Organization. understated. She never suggests that tran- The feature of her governance that dentity is social, not individual: the thorny, humiliating and expensive bureau- sracial adoption should be banned, but calls for more notice is her reliance on question “Who am I?” is indistin- cratic bramble to track down information lets the reader see that there are more and the state as an agent of progressive I guishable from the question “Where that might lead to the parents, along the less sensitive ways for white people to change. It seems likely that her persistent do I belong?” And so it shouldn’t be sur- way stumbling through exhausting disap- raise children of color. She recognizes determination to make governmental prising that memoir was the hottest liter- pointments and anxiously dialed wrong that adoption itself begins with loss, that policies the shaping force in Norwegian ary genre of the last decade. Ours is a cul- numbers. When the birth parent is found, the intensity of searching can become a society comes, in part, from her expo- ture in which belonging is often iffy, in both sides often describe it as falling in dangerous emotional habit, that the orig- sure to Swedish politics. It is a shame which displacement is the norm—and love: they ritually compare features, as the inal grief cannot be wiped away: “No that there is little reflection on this, along memoir is the perfect form in which to searcher and her lost and found family matter who stepped in, no matter what with the place of Brundtland’s mother in map that sense of being lost and invent discover that she has her aunt’s laugh, her they gave me, there was still always this her life. (She worked alongside Gro as an an identity of one’s own. father’s pudgy knees, her half-sister’s chin. fact of someone missing, this fact that administrative assistant, a job she had Catherine McKinley is the editor of The searcher feels a new and almost des- there had been no language for, no struc- held before her daughter took over the Afrekete, an anthology of writing by black perate sense of belonging, of finally ture, no recognition of that immense office of the Prime Minister.) In terms lesbians, and a creative writing teacher at being real, accompanied by a dizzying fear grief.” She manages to forgive her adop- of personal influence, Brundtland cred- . The sense of of losing this new family yet again. Soon, tive family for their limitations, and draws its her father, a doctor and a statesman, displacement she records in this memoir however, the birth parents’ shocking closer to them again; she selects which of as her guiding political light. At one can be summarized in four words: biracial flaws emerge—lying, or drugs, or mental her new relatives she wants to build rela- point, she reflects on the fact that other child, transracially adopted. Unable to illness, or hustling, or outrageous expecta- tionships with, and does so with care. women leaders she has met through find any writing by transracially adopted tions, or shaking the long-lost child down Her real fury is saved for the adoption political work also had supportive children, McKinley wrote her own. for money—and communications rup- system’s brutal stonewalling, which forced fathers. She acknowledges a fascinating Adopted by liberal blueblood WASPs, ture. And, as in any mythic search, finally her to fight so hard and so long to get the mix of identification with him, coupled McKinley was brought up in painstaking- the adoptee comes to recognize that this information that finally released her into with staunch feminism. ly white Attleboro, Massachusetts, a family, too, will not complete her or her own life. At the book’s end, after her Brundtland would be the first to point working-class town outside Boston. She answer that question “who am I?”—that birth parents have each given their per- out that her multiple roles could not have opens the book with a chapter called her life remains her own. mission, McKinley finally receives her been possible had she not won the love “Afro-Saxon” and with a broodingly (and adoption files: and loyalty of family members and advi- perhaps unintentionally) funny scene: on cKinley’s detailed and carefully sors. Her husband, Olav Brundtland, a family vacation to Scotland at the age of observed narration keeps us I flipped back through the pages and remains an emotional anchor and political eleven, she notices shopkeepers’ raised M reading as she crosses each of I found myself sobbing. I was no confidante, despite his conservative politi- eyebrows as she searches an Edinburgh these intersections—all of which, for her, longer the social welfare system’s cal affinities. When it came time for her to shop for the McKinley tartan. Later that are tangled with race. Nothing in her birth hostage…. I knew that Mary Steed respond to the call as Prime Minister, the day, she can’t stop staring at a group of family remotely matches what she imag- [her adoption caseworker] had been couple struck a deal: he demanded what Africans sitting in a pub. ined: not the wildly unreliable Jewish a friend to me at times when I could British nannies refer to as “sole charge” of Catherine’s parents didn’t know how mother, not the affectionate African not see it. She had told me in time- the four children, meaning he would have to help her handle racially-charged American hustler of a father who lives in released capsules much of what was the last word on household matters. encounters; they were of the old school Vegas and can’t cross state lines because of there. In some ways, her slow and Parents reading this passage will not laugh that believed color shouldn’t matter and a warrant for his arrest, not the plethora of careful disclosure of details had pro- as much as wince, knowing the long-term could be ignored. That wasn’t possible half-siblings who, like circus clowns tum- tected me. But what a price I had emotional costs of this decision. for Catherine, painfully aware of the bling endlessly out of a Volkswagen, keep paid. Eight years. What does it say We hear Brundtland, nagged by the double-takes, the suspicions, the subtle being revealed even after it seems there about a system that exacts so much conscience of a professional mother, and nasty racism triggered by her misfit couldn’t possibly be any more. Along the for such simple truths? (p. 270) I counting up her overnight journeys skin. She writes: “The writer Anatole way she offers a keen look at color con- (Parliament helped to twist the knife, Broyard explained so perfectly his own flicts and codes among those of African relentlessly criticizing her for her interna- predicament in a family where the lines ancestry, not just in the United States but tional role), remembering which trips she of race were similarly complicated: in Ghana, in Jamaica, and even in cut short to come home, and recalling ‘Anyone who saw me with my parents Germany. When she meets Afro-German how she shut the door to the basement in already knew too much about me.’ I felt a women raised by white mothers, now order to receive phone calls during a similar loss of privacy, of being out of searching for the black GIs who had aban- political crisis. We catch glimpses of Olav control of how others saw me.” doned their pregnant German girlfriends, demonstrating an unflappable adaptabili- McKinley resented her family for McKinley writes that she understood how ty. In my personal favorite, he irons Gro’s expecting her to figure out her racial iden- frustrated these women were “with the dress while she shampoos her hair just tity alone: for not understanding how to way that American racial politics were before her induction into office in 1986. handle her hair (that trope of biracial nar- written over their own…. I, too, was look- Only once do we peer into the private ratives), for not accompanying her to a ing for a way to find my own story within emotional life of the family, in a painful nearby AME church (where one child the larger story of , but chapter about the suffering and eventual refused to touch her because she was too I felt worn out from trying to cast myself suicide of her son, Jorgen, who struggled white), for not moving to a community within the very narrow conventions in unsuccessfully against manic depression. where a mixed-race family wouldn’t stand narratives of Blackness of that era. I was Brundtland resigned from Party leader- out so baldly. And so she began to invent an African American woman without any ship after this, but she maintained her families for herself. She took a picture of discernable roots, with barely any melanin, own sanity through an intense campaign an older black woman she wished were with a Jewish birth mother, adopted into to try to bring Norway into the European her mother and put it on her dresser, and raised in a WASP nest.” Union, a project that kept her involved in telling boarding-school and college pals Although I couldn’t stop turning the an international forum while pursuing her that this was her mother, despite the pages—I always wanted to know what favorite goal, democracy, across the painful encounters with reality when the came next and what McKinley made of Norwegian countryside. McKinleys showed up to visit. She slowly her experiences—the book isn’t beautiful- The test of the value of this book, I found other biracial, transracially adopted ly written. Its structure is murky: often I think, is its power to open up fresh polit- friends who formed a close-knit group didn’t know when or where we were in ical issues and larger goals as it weaves in called “Friends of the Mulatta Nation.” the narrative, or where a particular con- and out of personal events. Gro Harlem Finally, she embarked on the adoptee’s versation was taking place (Jamaica? Brundtland has an invincible spirit, and version of life’s fairy tale journey, the pas- Boston? New York?), since flashbacks having kept this book by my side for sev- sage in which we try to discover ourselves and flashforwards are scarcely signaled. eral days, I feel something akin to saving by finding our place among others: the The sentences are not especially notewor- grace, gleaned from seeing the political fraught search for the birth parents. thy. And the tug toward depression that world through her eyes. There can’t be a American stories of searching for a McKinley mentions is evident, with anger better reason for reading a book in these birth parent have certain features in com- bubbling just beneath the surface, rarely hard times. I mon. The searcher must crawl through a leavened by humor. But McKinley is

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 5 Protestants and fundamentalists, and by arguments of its opponents, largely by 1968, the Right had begun to mobilize “proliferating” talk about sex. Rightists activists in opposition to tax-funded pub- used inflammatory language, whipping up Across the great divide lic-school curricula advocating sexual strong emotions by demonizing their “permissiveness.” Led at first by the anti- opponents. They argued that sex talk was by Gail Bederman communist John Birch Society and the itself performative, so teachers who Christian Crusade, opponents told far- spoke about sex to children were actually Talk About Sex: The Battles Over Sex Education in the fetched “depravity stories” of teachers child abusers. They depicted sex educa- demonstrating coitus in the classroom tion materials as pornographic and read United States by Janice M. Irvine. Berkeley, CA: University and accused sex educators of being sexu- excerpts at public meetings, often quoting al predators and communists. By the materials never used in classrooms. They of California Press, 2002, 271 pp., $25.95 hardcover. 1970s, anti-communism had largely lost argued against any classroom mention of its political appeal, but the New Right homosexuality by falsely depicting typical Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious had learned from the Old Right how to lesbian and gay sexual practices as involv- whip up support by opposing compre- ing feces, urine and/or . Tolerance by Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini. hensive sex education. Christian parents I was outraged at these distortions, as “worried about their children” were now Irvine intended. I wish, though, that she New York: New York University Press, 2003, swelling the ranks of the New Right. had examined the theological assump- 152 pp., $21.95 hardcover. tions that made these noxious falsehoods n retrospect, I think each side’s seem persuasive. Perhaps because Irvine I inability to understand the other’s does not explore why conservative I principles was a sure-fire recipe for Christian parents oppose sex education, I ome years ago, I asked a devout forty years and investigates how the the ensuing culture wars, although Irvine got the sense that sex educators, con- young evangelical colleague a ques- inflammatory tactics and arguments might disagree with me. Evangelicals and fused about parents’ serious religious S tion that had long perplexed me: developed by national pro-family organi- fundamentalist Protestants see human beliefs, saw them as merely irrational. “Why are evangelical Protestants so zations worked in local sex education history and their own lives in terms of an Rooted in a liberal, progressive world- obsessed with sex?” My question per- controversies. In chilling detail, Irvine ongoing struggle between good and evil. view, sex educators failed to explain their plexed “John” too. “Evangelicals are not shows how the Christian Right’s provoca- They strive to live by Biblical precepts, “yes values” about sex. Most conserva- obsessed with sex,” he replied, puzzled. tive, often distorted depictions of secular which include proscriptions against tive Christians would not have adopted John’s religious life centered around try- sex education heated emotion. Right- extramarital sexual activity and injunc- sex educators’ views even if they had ing to live in a way worthy of Christ, wing activists obscured the religious con- tions to love their neighbors. Teaching understood them. Yet had the mutual which included caring for those weaker tent of their ideas while creating “absti- their children to embrace SIECUS’ “yes misunderstandings been less profound, than himself, committing himself to the nence only” public school curricula. At values” and to treat sexual activity as the debates might have been less bitter Christian fellowship and trying to lead a best, these curricula omit all mention of pleasure would be unthinkable, because it and divisive. good, just life. Discussions about sex contraception. At worst, they are overtly would violate God’s law and thus endan- Christian Right activists mastered the played little if any part. homophobic and include false informa- ger their children’s immortal souls. No art of explaining religious goals in secular ”What about all the people who follow tion—for example, that are wonder religiously conservative parents terms. As a Christian Coalition training Jerry Falwell, and The 700 Club and all the ineffective at preventing the spread of were “worried about their kids”! manual urged right-wing school board talk about homosexuality and sex run AIDS. Irvine shows that this misleading Many secular Americans find it hard candidates, “Don’t wear your religion on rampant in our society?” “Oh, that.” John, sex education, funded in part by federal to believe that intelligent, thoughtful peo- your sleeve…. Talk their language. They embarrassed, shrugged it off. “That’s just tax dollars, pervades American public- ple believe in a supernatural God, partic- don’t understand yours.” This ability to parents worrying about their children. school classrooms today. ularly one whose church seems to advo- speak in secular terms, I think, is one rea- That’s not central to evangelical life.” Since the 1960s, conservatives’ ire has cate “irrational” ideas about things like son the religious Right has been able to As I read Janice M. Irvine’s Talk About been directed toward “comprehensive” sex. Comprehensive sex educators seem make its moral agenda seem nonpartisan. Sex and Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann sex education, an approach developed by to have suffered from this kind of blind “Talk their language. They don’t Pellegrini’s Love the Sin, I kept remember- Dr. Mary Calderone’s Sex Information spot. Even Irvine herself, despite a clear understand yours.” This might be valu- ing John’s comment. These two impor- and Education Council of the United effort to discuss the nuances of contem- able advice for pro-sex feminists, too. Is tant books tell us a great deal about the States (SIECUS). SIECUS rejected porary evangelicalism, tends to explain it possible to explain the morality of pro- relationship between religion and sex in and moralism, advocating a “scientific,” parents’ opposition to comprehensive sex feminism to conservative Christians, the US. Today, it seems almost inevitable value-neutral approach to sex. It depicted sex education as arising from irrational forcefully and clearly, without minimiz- that right-wing politicians should appeal pleasure as a normal part of human sexu- “fears and confusions” rather than from ing the profound differences between to a “pro-family” Christian conservatism, ality, although it didn’t encourage thoughtful, principled conclusions. the two positions? mobilizing voters by demonizing homo- teenaged extramarital intercourse. Its cur- New Right politicians, meanwhile, sexuality, sex education and blurry gender ricula encouraged older high school stu- were only too willing to speak conserva- useful strategy might be found in roles. These books force us to question dents to make up their own minds about tive Christians’ language. As Irvine Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and that inevitability. While Irvine shows us the morality of contraception, homosex- demonstrates, by the early 1970s the A the Limits of Religious Tolerance. how we got to this pass, Jakobsen and uality, and similar issues. Right needed to find a new type of moral Jakobsen and Pellegrini argue that it is Pellegrini suggest a new and powerful As Irvine points out, it is impossible politics because its old moral appeals, not enough to ask merely for tolerance strategy to move past it. to teach “value-free” sex education. based on anti-communism and racial seg- and equal rights. Rather, it is necessary to Irvine gives a riveting account of how Calderone explicitly stated, “We cannot regation, had been discredited. Opposing demand true sexual freedom, which they the Christian Right came to control much talk about without talk- sexual “permissiveness” and supporting see as related to religious freedom. of the sex education curriculum taught in ing about values, but they’re not the ‘no’ “pro-family” (no sex outside marriage) Jakobsen and Pellegrini neither public schools. She traces how controver- values, they’re the ‘yes’ values.” These policies provided powerful new moral address the religious Right nor suggest sies over sex education have helped con- “yes values” were abhorrent to many grounding for political conservatism. that feminists open a dialogue with con- solidate conservative politics over the last conservative Catholics, evangelical Disaffected Christian parents helped servative Christians. Their book—part of Republicans build an electoral majority New York University Press’s Sexual by wooing two new constituencies: white Culture: New Directions from the Center for evangelical Protestants, who had previ- Lesbian and Gay Studies series—addresses CROSSING BORDERS: A Memoir ously kept their distance from electoral an audience that already believes in sexu- by Kate Ellis politics, and some conservative Catholics al freedom and suggests new ways of who had previously been aligned with the conceptualizing the basis for that free- “It is in places where I don’t belong that the blessings Democratic Party. This maneuver was dom. Yet their powerful arguments might of my life have found me.” So writes Kate Ellis, writer important in shifting the South from the help feminists to explain pro-sex values of poetry and fiction, in her memoir of her marriage Dixiecrats to the Republicans. to Christians who, knowing their own to Foley, a Nigerian woodcarver of traditional art. Irvine provides a rich, nuanced analy- denominations’ struggles against estab- sis of the many strategies through which lished churches, understand the value of CROSSING BORDERS explores class, race, and femi- the Christian Right overwhelmed the religious freedom. nism as Ellis, in literally and figuratively crossing bor- ders, seeks to come to terms with her personal history.

“ . . . the reader often feels part of the narrator’s expe- rience. But this is no fairy tale. Ellis also openly dis- MOVING? cusses her bouts with anorexia, a failed first marriage, and getting shot and nearly Don’t miss an issue! killed by two teenagers.” Library Journal Please give us six to eight weeks’ notice of your change of address. We “An immensely brave and honest book... compelling...” Kennedy Fraser, author of need your OLD address (on your mailing label, if possible) as well as your Ornament and Silence: Essays on Women’s Lives NEW one. Send the information to: Address Change, The Women’s $29.95 cloth; ISBN 0-8130-2284-3 Review of Books, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02481, or phone toll- Available at bookstores or from the University Press of Florida: 1-800-226-3822 free 888-283-8044/ fax 781-283-3645/ email [email protected].

6 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 The argument is subtle and original I’m more and more convinced of how and cannot be easily summarized. The complicated life is and how false was the authors start with a problem similar to way I imagined it in my fantasy.” Irvine’s: the government’s sponsorship Permanent exile Although hardships and hate abound, of traditional Christian doctrines of sex Jedwab’s diary details as well the joys of and marriage. Although the Constitution by Rochelle G. Ruthchild friendship, learning new skills, encounters protects freedom of religion, US courts with a wide range of people. Her closest and legislatures are enforcing Christian Girl with Two Landscapes: The Wartime Diary of Lena bonds are with women—several other standards of behavior. Thus, Americans young Jewish refugees and a few of the whose religion or moral values differ Jedwab, 1941-1945 by Lena Jedwab Rozenberg, translated older female staffers at the school. But from the majority’s are subjected to de here as in all her relationships, she is con- facto established Christianity. by Solon Beinfeld. New York: Holmes and Meier, scious of class differences, contrasting Focusing on the regulation of homo- her friend Genya, from a privileged sexuality as a case study, Jakobsen and 2002, 190 pp., $24.95 hardcover. upper-middle-class family, with Tanya, Pellegrini consider how best to unmask who is “simpler, nicer in character…and this unacknowledged established reli- I more proletarian.” gion and claim a more vibrant religious ike Anne Frank, Etty Hillesum and idleness, in unending sorrow and yearning Ultimately, despite her dire circum- and sexual freedom. Merely asking the Hannah Senesh, Lena Jedwab kept a for home….Mama, where are you now?” stances, Jedwab succeeds in the Soviet majority to tolerate sexual minorities, Ldiary during World War Two. Unlike Barely two months after her arrival, as she system. This had been her goal even they argue, will not achieve effective them, she survived the Holocaust. Indeed, lay sick in bed, someone stole her glasses. before the war, and she recognizes the freedom, because this strategy inevitably she was part of the largest group of This was an especially bitter blow, as she price paid in alienation from her family. positions the majority’s practices as nor- European Jews to escape: between 1941 exclaims in her journal: “I’ve lost half the At thirteen, she notes, she had made a mal. This “tolerance” strategy leaves and 1945, an estimated 250,000 Eastern light of the world….” conscious decision to escape the lives of members of minorities as perpetual sup- European Jews found refuge from the Her ideals are challenged in the harsh her parents: “at the price of strenuous plicants begging for sufferance rather Nazis in the Soviet Union. Her journal is Stalinist wartime environment. Working work and study I pulled myself out of the than exercising effective equality. an important contribution to understand- at a machine tractor station on a collective class to which my family belongs—simple Current analogies between racial ing this little-known aspect of Holocaust farm, she sees the brutality and poverty of proletarians—and created a path for minorities and homosexuals are clearly history. Originally published in Yiddish in the workers’ and peasants’ lives. Where, myself to the intelligentsia.” At the chil- inadequate. Because many Americans Paris in 1999, it has been masterfully trans- she asks, is the “merry, happy collective- dren’s home, she wins recognition in see racial discrimination as immoral, gay lated by Solon Beinfeld, with helpful intro- farm life” of Soviet propaganda? Yet she drama groups, in student government, in rights advocates often try to short-cir- ductions by Irena Klepfisz and Jan Gross. also tries out a peasant identity. She adapts the Komsomol (Young Communist) cuit moral judgment about homosexual- In addition to her Holocaust testimony, to peasant life, adopts peasant dress, eats organization, in literary activities, and par- ity by arguing that gay men and lesbians Jedwab describes the world of Soviet from the same bowl, drops her literary ticipates fully in social and socialist cele- are “sexual minorities’ deserving civil small towns and collective farms, Moscow language for the “short and sweet” brations, all the while working, mastering rights. This approach has led to argu- student life in the early to mid-1940s and -laced common language; but Russian and excelling academically. ments about the cause of homosexuali- coming of age in the wartime USSR. ultimately she knows that she can’t go fur- Completing her high school education, ty: is it innate, like race, or chosen? Lena Jedwab came from a poor family ther, she can’t truly “go to the people” any she is accepted at the Bauman Technical These arguments are distracting and in Bialystok, Poland. She was fourteen more than did nineteenth-century Russian Institute in Moscow and leaves at the end unnecessary, the authors insist, “because when the Germans invaded her hometown intellectuals. In one entry she compares of August, 1943, for the Soviet capital. there is nothing wrong with homosexuality.” on September 15, 1939. From the moment herself to a sixteen-year-old tractor driver The last section of the diary contrasts Like the appeal to tolerance, the racial they occupied Poland, the Germans began who is injured, his face battered and vividly with the earlier sections, and also analogy should be jettisoned. their brutal treatment of the Jews, so it was ulcerated. Unable to get medical atten- demonstrates how at this time the Soviet Instead, the authors propose that we with some relief that many Jews welcomed tion, he is back on the job a few days later. system was open to the upward mobility see sexual freedom as analogous to reli- the takeover of their part of Poland by the She asks herself: “how many days and of Jews, even foreign Jews like Lena. Her gious freedom. Using this argument, Soviets just one week later, on September weeks would I, or some other ‘big-city hard work at school and on the collective pro-sex feminists, gays and lesbians, and 22, 1939, as a result of the infamous Nazi- intellectual’ have been sick in bed and farm rewarded, she has made it into the other sexual minorities can demand that Soviet pact. Lena Jedwab was already a taken medicine? And he—nothing.” Soviet student elite, living in a dorm with the government protect freedom’s “free member of the Communist Pioneer youth two other young women, with “electricity, exercise”—not merely in private but in movement before 1939 and she continued n the collective farm, Lena is central heating, a radio! When did I ever public. Tying sexual freedom to religious this work during the two-year Soviet occu- cursed and persecuted as a Jew: live in such luxury?” For a time, she has freedom would allow those who believe pation of Bialystok. Her activism won her O “It’s a disaster: even in the Soviet sufficient funds for food and clothes, and in sexual freedom to draw on the “rich a trip to a Young Pioneers summer camp Union, anti-Semitism holds sway, twenty- some extra to enjoy the rich cultural life in tradition of dissent and heterodoxy in Druskenik, Lithuania. She left Bialystok six years after the October Revolution! It Moscow. The tide of the war has turned, offered under the umbrella of the First for Lithuania on June 16, 1941; the is hard, very hard!” She struggles with her and although many battles lie ahead, the Amendment’s religious clause.” This Germans invaded the Soviet Union on socialist beliefs, seeking to understand outcome is clear. analogy insists that a robust pluralism of June 22. Suddenly cut off from her family, how grinding poverty leads some to anti- Jedwab provides vivid portraits of her sexual belief and sexual practice is a pos- the seventeen-year-old Jedwab was com- Semitism: “When I consider these cir- student circle and their support for her, itive good to be encouraged and protect- pletely on her own after the Pioneer cumstances, I forgive them everything. especially after an almost fatal fall under ed. Sex, like religion, can forge new camp’s evacuation. Only at the end of the Forgive them even for persecuting me as an electric train. She remains proudly types of affective and caring relation- war did she learn that her entire family and a Jew. Is it their fault that the people have Jewish and contrasts her ideals with those ships based on affirmative shared values, almost all Bialystok Jews had perished in been indoctrinated with the idea that Jews of many of her friends who “are ashamed such as those created in many gay and the Holocaust. are the cause of their poverty? It is of their Jewishness.” Still, in contrast to lesbian communities. Jedwab embodied the diverse mix of because of the blind ignorance, the her experiences in the countryside, there is Jakobsen and Pellegrini’s “yes values” eastern Poland, where ethnic Poles were a obscurantism, and poverty of the people no mention in entries from the Moscow are even more radical than Calderone’s. minority, living alongside Jews, Ukrainians, that they are so depressed and embittered. period of any overt anti-Semitism. Their analogy between religious and sexu- Belorussians, Germans and Lithuanians. al freedom suggests positive ways to begin A native speaker of Yiddish and fluent in “speaking conservative Christians’ lan- Polish, she had strong socialist and Jewish guage” about sex. Adopting a “robust nationalist ideals. She chose to write her belief in religious pluralism” should diary in Yiddish, reflecting her commit- encourage pro-sex feminists to respect ment to secular Jewish culture, and per- conservative Christians and to learn haps also because she, an intensely private enough about them to talk with them person, knew that of those around her, more effectively. We will not convince few would be able to read it. most conservative Christians that sexual She spent the years from 1941 to 1943, activity outside marriage is moral. But we the bleakest time of the war, far from the may be able to convince them that we do battlefields of European Russia, in a chil- not want to convert their children to sec- dren’s home in Karakulino in the Udmurtia ular religious and sexual beliefs—that we Autonomous Soviet Republic, three thou- respect their right to raise their children in sand miles from Bialystok and sixty kilome- their faith. Perhaps we can escape the stul- ters from the nearest rail line, on the banks tifying religious repression of the state. of the Kama River. She describes the hard- The culture war remains hot. We can- ships, the lack of food, fuel and sanitary not afford to lose the battle for nonpar- facilities, her clashes with the school direc- tisan sex education in the schools, sexual tor, her homesickness. Her first diary entry, freedom for all citizens or a host of on October 8, 1941, is despairing: “Now, other endangered human rights. Love the nearing the end of the seventeenth year of Sin and Talk About Sex are both essential my life, with my body in full bloom and full reading for anyone who cares about of energy, love of life and the joy of youth, these issues. I the year is dirty, muddy….My days pass in

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 7 Think globally, act globally by Amy Edelstein

Mary Robinson puts human rights on everyone’s agenda I

ary Robinson may well be the Rutgers Center for Women’s Global most tough-compassion, prag- Leadership, told me, “By and large the M matic human rights advocate women’s movement doesn’t get it…. of recent times. Appearing last Within the women’s movement in the December as the key moderator for the United States there’s a perception of the State of the World Forum’s Commis- human rights framework as being sion on Globalization meetings in abstract so women on the ground don’t Mexico City, she kept a broad-based fully make use of human rights tools in Genya and Lena Jedwab, December 19, 1941. An inscription on the back reads: convention on track, pushed the outer their framework.” “If life ever smiles at me, let this photograph remind me of this sad edge of the discussions on ethical glob- This criticism of the human rights period in my life. —Lena” From Girl with Two Landscapes. alization and human security in a post- agenda as abstract or arbitrary was once September 11 world, and set in motion well founded, but it applies to the move- Reaching the pinnacle of Soviet academ- the Jewish writer Sholem Asch’s novel far-reaching human rights initiatives ment as it was 25 years ago. In the inter- ic success as a student at Moscow about Jesus, The Nazarene. throughout Africa. im much has changed. In particular, dur- University, Jedwab experiences a gnawing Jedwab is a fine writer, vividly describ- The bold strides she is making in her ing the five years from 1997 to 2002 loneliness despite her achievements. Her ing her hunger—“our hopes to ease the work as a private citizen keep the same when Mary Robinson shouldered the diary entries are sprinkled with references to cramps in our half-empty stomachs have pace as the innovations that made her mantle of UN High Commissioner, she her family, especially her mother, but she is run out like a cracked egg”—or the beau- tenure as President of Ireland in the worked hard to bring the human rights also ambivalent: “I do not have my family ty of nature contrasted with the confine- 1990s so groundbreaking. At that time, in framework out of the realm of abstract now....Would they be able to understand me ment and squalor of the collective spite of domestic economic and security or emotionally based argument, apply- and guide me to a path in life? My mother— farm—“I leave the stinking, filthy wagon issues, Robinson placed a great deal of ing her lawyer’s mind to shape and that kind, wise, and self-sacrificing woman for the nearby valley to pick berries, roll emphasis on the needs of developing define human rights agreements and the of the people—didn’t understand me two around in the green grass, look up at the countries. She was the first Head of State organizations that implement and mon- years ago, when I was still at home.” The infinity of the sky, and dream. The whole to visit Rwanda in the aftermath of the itor them. Red Army’s liberation of Bialystok in July valley is blanketed with sunlight. The tips genocide and among the first to visit 1944 leads to fresh pain. Her letters home of the many nearby hills are bathed in Somalia at the height of the famine, he systematic effort to make it dif- are returned unanswered, and her fears golden rays…. Here it’s so spacious and efforts that earned her the CARE ficult to enforce international about her family are confirmed. free!”—or her first love: “Now I have Humanitarian Award. It is the same T human rights standards in the US found a comrade with whom I can bold- intensity that marked her time as UN began in the 1950s. It’s said that John t this moment of her greatest sor- ly go hand in hand down life’s thorny High Commissioner, where she worked Foster Dulles once exclaimed during the row, Jedwab finds her first love, path, with whom I can be proud that I closely with Secretary-General Kofi Cold War that he would never sign anoth- A Yulik Mashevitsky, the son of her belong to an ancient historic people….” Annan to integrate human rights con- er human rights treaty if it could be used former teacher from Bialystok. She Lena Jedwab’s path after the end of the cerns into all activities of the United against us. Prophetic warnings, if one enthusiastically gives herself over to war is illustrative of the changes in Soviet Nations and to refocus human rights takes note that of the six recent major thoughts of regeneration for herself, policies towards Jews. Having reached her work where it has been proven to be international human rights treaties, the Yulik and the Jewish people. As with goal of joining the intelligentsia and with- most effective—on a country and region- United States has signed only three. It’s the many first loves, this one disappoints. out a family to return to, she stayed in the al level. Holding law degrees from Kings only nation of 193 to refuse to sign the Yulik is a flirt; Lena’s obsession with him Soviet Union. But in 1947, a wave of offi- Inn, Dublin, and , she Convention on the Rights of the Child; is increasingly painful. She finally breaks cially sponsored anti-Semitic attacks and has also has been named an Honorary one of six nations that have rejected the off the relationship before Yulik leaves the arrest of her University mentor drove Fellow of upwards of eight distinguished International Covenant on Economic, for the front, but he still occupies her her back to Poland, where she met her colleges, and has received more high- Social, and Cultural Rights (even China has thoughts even in the midst of the “bril- future husband Sholem Rozenberg. level humanitarian and human rights ratified this treaty, and Chinese NGOs liant bouquets of fireworks” celebrating Lena Jedwab is still alive and living in awards than can be listed. have begun to use its standards to chal- the war’s end. The diary does not mention Paris, her memory crippled by Alzheimer’s Robinson’s main concern now is to lenge their government on ethnic discrim- Yulik’s fate, but her July 24, 1945 entry disease. Aware of her deteriorating memo- broaden the discussion on human rights, ination issues and policies concerning exudes despair and self-doubt: “What ry, in 1992 she began to transcribe her emphasizing economic, social and cul- HIV/AIDS); and one of only three have all my theories brought me? diary, a task taken up by her husband when tural rights as well as the right to devel- nations that has refused to sign the Pleasure, joy, happiness?....I’ve already her condition worsened. Their efforts help opment—all elements of the human Convention on the Elimination of All lost trust in myself….Has life really bro- make visible the little-told story of Polish rights agenda which she feels is critical Forms of Discrimination Against Women. ken me so early?” But she is also hopeful, Jews who survived the Holocaust in the to bring stability to this increasingly When High Commissioner Robinson citing the Russian proverb: “Next year, all Soviet Union, add to the limited number unstable world. Human rights, she applied legally agreed upon international this will be set right.” A month later, in of English-language sources about points out, are not arbitrary or abstract, standards to the United States in its her last diary entry, Lena appears to be wartime conditions in Russia, provide a but a rule of law to which governments recent treatment of detainees at setting things right, engaging spiritedly in perspective from below on the changing can be held accountable. Like an evan- Guantanamo Bay and to Israel in its the world, describing her visit to a friend’s nature of popular and official attitudes gelist with the Good News, she hopes to treatment of Palestinians, it is no secret home in Ukraine, contacts with a Jewish towards Jews, and demonstrate anew the spread this message to as many levels of that the Bush Administration expressed cultural organization, compliments about significance of diaries for understanding society as possible. its disapproval so strongly to Secretary- her Yiddish, and her critical reaction to women’s history. I This may be easier said than done, for General Annan that Robinson was not reasons women’s and human rights advo- given another term. Never one to be bul- cates like Charlotte Bunch, Dorothy lied, Robinson responded in a Village Thomas and Mallika Dutt have begun to Voice interview, “I’m prepared to pay the SUPPORT THE WOMEN’S REVIEW address. In many, if not most, Western price of taking stands that may not be democracies, including the USA, there’s a popular or politically in my best interests. “No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so visceral disconnect with international I came into this job not to keep a job— lasting,” said Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Reading may be human rights standards when it comes to but to do a job.” cheap, but publishing isn’t. Like many periodicals, we can’t bring home turf. As Robinson recalled in a Undaunted, ever energetic and opti- in all the income we need through subscription, advertising and recent interview on Salon.com, “As High mistic, after her term ended on newsstand sales alone. Unlike many periodicals, we’re not Commissioner, when I took issue with September 11, 2002 Robinson wasted lit- bankrolled by wealthy individuals or large foundations. We’ve been Australia over their harsh detention poli- tle time. As soon as she stepped down, supported from the start by hundreds of readers who have contributed amounts ranging cy for asylum seekers, they were out- she set up the Ethical Globalization from one dollar to several thousand. We depend on those donations to cover the small but raged. ‘We’re a democratic country, we Initiative, a fifteen-month task force, say- real gap between income and expenses. Help us stay healthy: please add a donation, no don’t need you here!’ As if international ing expressly “I will use the tools and matter how large or small, when you start or renew your subscription. Think about includ- standards only applied to developing connections of my recent role as UN ing a bequest to the Women’s Review when making out your will. And if you have the countries.” This disconnect extends into High Commissioner and former resources now, take out a lifetime subscription: at only $300 it’s a real bargain! activist circles, and may be more deeply President of Ireland to do as much as I YOUR DONATION TO THE WOMEN’S REVIEW IS TAX-DEDUCTIBLE embedded in our psyche than we are aware of. Charlotte Bunch, Director of continued on page 10

8 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 Women’s Studies from Duke

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Working Out in Japan Shaping the Female Body Duke University Press in Tokyo Fitness Clubs LAURA SPIELVOGEL Visit us at www.dukeupress.edu or call toll-free 1-888-651-0122 264 pages, 23 illustrations, paper $19.95 continued from page 8 thread of human rights, she is setting is often a call for new and strong Political Rights, International something in motion that will spread far leadership, yet there are very few Covenant on Economic, Social, and can.” Beginning in Africa, with six pilot beyond its origins. “I am not seeking to definitions of what that might be and Cultural Rights, Convention on the nation members of NEPAD (the New reinvent the wheel,” she emphasized what would bring it about. I feel one Rights of the Child, Convention Economic Partnership for Africa’s again and again at the Mexico City meet- of the paradoxes of our postmodern, against Discrimination against Development), she has a clear vision for ings, “nor to create more work or anoth- relativistic age is that there’s a need Women, International Convention a way to work with local NGOs and er position for myself. The structures are for hierarchy set by leaders at the on the Elimination of All Forms of heads of state to support and strengthen already there.” same time that there’s an unprece- Racial Discrimination, and NEPAD’s goals of good governance and While Robinson sees Africa as the dented need to build coalition across Convention against Torture and rule of law, in the belief that the stability critical starting point, she envisions a diverse groupings. How would you Other Cruel, Inhuman or this will bring to the region will raise for- model that can be used in other nations characterize the kind of leadership Degrading Treatment or eign confidence and encourage financial, to move other progressive agendas for- we need? Punishment. These provide a very technical and administrative investment ward. It’s a plan that could infuse the good framework in the area of and support of local growth initiatives. American women’s movement with new MR: I certainly think it is impor- administration, justice, rule of law, Robinson’s agenda is as pragmatic as it strength and legitimacy and spread out- tant to directly address the serious and basic economic, social and cul- is exciting. Working with the times, mov- wards from there. “It is a tremendously and worrying issues that face us tural rights. ing forward to link existing groups, and exciting time,” Robinson repeats over and to do it in a way that brings I want to emphasize that I knitting together social, health, environ- and over again. “The more I talk about it, people with you. The only way of believe this technical normative ment and economic task forces with the the more jazzed I get.” I leading now is in broad coalitions framework is a huge addition to our that are empowering of those who democracy. I call it part of the are being led and allow them to “rules of the road of globalization.” Amy Edelstein interviewed Mary Robinson on December 6, 2002, in Mexico City at the second contribute to the evolution of the I put it beside the environmental annual meeting of the Commission on Globalization. leadership style. conventions, arms control and labor There is a great disenchantment rights. There is an incredible density AE: As one of the key individuals who MR: I think it’s wider than just with globalization. Unfortunately of conventions and regulations that has worked to define a universally women’s rights. I came to New the debate is now very divided have been accepted by nations as accepted framework for human rights York very shortly after the terrible between those who say that we being binding on them. They are that meets the reality of this global attacks took place, and went down must have free trade and that mar- part of the law but they are not age, you are also known for holding to Ground Zero. I saw the immedi- ket forces are the only way in which being implemented in part because governments—regardless of their size ate impact, both the trauma and the we will bring the world forward, we don’t have joined-up govern- or power—to a single standard, resilience of people trying to deal and those who are protesting glob- ment. It’s most often the depart- which has made you many friends with this terrible situation. I then alization. There isn’t a meeting of ment of foreign affairs that ratifies and admirers, and some harsh and sat down with human rights col- the minds. What I feel is important the human rights instruments, the influential critics. I’d like to explore leagues to analyze the situation. We is to try to shape globalization. That labor minister who ratifies the labor with you some of the challenges of concluded that under the existing means being able to convince peo- ones, etc. Ministers of trade or agri- global transformation as seen human rights jurisprudence those ple that we in fact have the power culture don’t even know what their through the lens of human rights. To attacks constituted “crimes against to do that shaping. governments have agreed to. The begin, how would you describe the humanity.” When I started to think about only way we’ll bridge that gap is by climate for human rights today, when I thought it was extraordinarily what to call the initiative I am now having a very literate civil society. A there is so much public emphasis on important that this would be the heading, I decided to juxtapose the civil society that knows that these security? approach to the attacks: criminality words “ethical” and “globalization,” treaties are not just words. They are and bringing the perpetrators to jus- because apparently that’s a bit legally binding. You can name and MR: I think it’s important at the tice. By holding the perpetrators as shocking for people. When people shame. You have the possibility of moment, when there is a preoccu- the worst criminals in the world, ask me “What new ethical concepts airing breaches at the hearings in pation with security, that we get the you isolate them. You cannot in the are you coming up with?” I explain Geneva or in New York. agenda back to a concern about name of any religion justify what that I’m not looking for new con- human rights. Since September 11, they’ve done if the acts are deemed cepts. They are there. Governments AE: How can civil society effectively there’s been a lot of anxiety about “crimes against humanity.” You have signed up to value systems. I make use of these conventions and human security. The message that I limit the support particularly in am focusing on the system of inter- treaties? want to get across, and that the communities that can be manipulat- national norms and standards for human rights community as a whole ed if the acts are framed as a wider human rights. Human rights isn’t MR: Over the last ten years we’ve wants to get across, is that not only issue. By taking the approach of a about rhetoric and words, it’s about begun to see civil society groups is there no contradiction between “war on terrorism,” my concern is technical commitments by govern- calling on their governments to fully upholding the international that that actually inflates the terror- ments to legally protect, promote adhere to these instruments. The human rights standards and com- ists. It broadens their base of sup- and progressively implement certain way they are doing it is through the bating terrorism but that we won’t port because they’re in a war against rights like the right to food, safe reporting process. Governments be able to effectively deal with ter- the great Satan, as they see it, and water, education, health, etc. This is have to report every few years on rorism unless we uphold standards as they propagate it to very impres- almost a universal system. Take the the progress they have made. The of human rights. sionable young people. agreement that came out of the UN committees, either in Geneva The concept of human security Some of this also has a direct Convention on the Rights of the or in New York, examine the is much broader than can be satis- impact on women, partly because Child. The United States is the only reports publicly. They hear govern- fied by any Homeland Security that very divide is in danger of country that hasn’t signed it. The ment representatives and NGOs; Department. The Commission on strengthening fundamentalism, and rest of the world now has a value they consider the points that each Human Security chaired by [Nobel although we have to be very con- system defining rights for all chil- side has made and then come out Laureate] Amartya Sen and [UN cerned about different fundamen- dren up to the age of eighteen. with their concluding observations. High Commissioner for Refugees] talisms—Christian fundamentalism, The great contribution of the Governments are bound to publish Sadako Ogata is in the process of Muslim fundamentalism, Jewish second half of the last century was these concluding observations. Very creating an international legal defi- fundamentalism—at the same time to devise a normative framework, often they don’t. They hide them nition of “human security.” This we also are seeing some alliances get agreement on those rules, and under a shelf. So it’s up to the civil framework will protect the most between those fundamentalisms get a system going to monitor society and agencies like the UN vulnerable sectors of society and which is resulting in probably the implementation through the report- High Commission for Human will include issues of economic greatest erosion of women’s rights. ing process. Governments report to Rights to make them public. The security and health security—for This is what was so concerning the treaty bodies, and civil society Internet helps that tremendously. If example, the issue of HIV/AIDs or in Johannesburg [at the 2002 World can more and more influence what governments are more and more a growing aging population, security Summit on Sustainable happens. We haven’t seen full pinned to living up to their obliga- for children against being trafficked. Development]. Canada’s attempt to implementation of the system yet tions, then the international system The work of this Commission is require guidelines for women’s because civil society is just begin- as a whole—the World Bank and very important. It also serves to health issues to be in accordance ning to become skilled enough to the IMF—will also have to respect reopen the broad human rights with international human rights insist that governments live up to those obligations instead of imple- agenda at a time when it has been standards and not be solely subject their obligations. menting structural adjustment poli- shadowed by security issues in the to traditional custom and religious cies that erode the capacity of a wake of September 11. practices [the debate over Paragraph AE: What would you say is the first government, for example, to buy 47] was resisted by a grouping that step? food or water. AE: There’s a growing concern that included the Vatican, the United I think good leadership now is the move to decouple human rights States, Syria and Libya. A very MR: What I feel is very important to tell that story well and convinc- and national security is resulting in an strange alliance when you think is to bring the legal framework to ingly to enough people that we link erosion of the progress gained by about it. the fore. The six main instruments NGOs worldwide, so that the women over recent decades. Can of human rights that already exist voice of the many is heard. It’s you elaborate on the threat of current AE: In discussions addressing the and can be used are: The another way of exercising power. war rhetoric on women’s rights? complex issues of globalization, there International Covenant on Civil and You can either do it hierarchically

10 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 by a few strong voices at the top why I had to be very tough on the tices on how to get the gender or you can do it by harnessing in a United States after September 11. dimension higher up on the agenda; modern way that respects every- The fact that the United States—by how to look at laws across dif- body’s voice, but combines by not defining the status of prisoners ferent countries and protect women sheer numbers and collective in Guantanamo Bay, or by holding when they come into court assert- power the capacity to influence. people for lengthy periods under ing that they have been raped, or to the immigration laws—was not ensure that there are women at AE: Do you feel there are some posi- complying with international human police stations when women who tive steps in that direction? rights norms and standards was have been raped go for protection, being viewed by the rest of the etc. It’s this learning across coun- MR: Yes, I do. Take, for example, world as a signal that those stan- tries that I think is very important. the women’s movement. There’s a dards had changed. I had to say, as huge amount being done at a local UN High Commissioner, that those AE: What is your goal now that you no level, and increasing networking, standards had not changed. They are a longer hold an official government or and networking between networks. legal technical apparatus. They don’t international post? At Beijing there was a group change because one country is not focused particularly on the labor upholding them fully. That is to be MR: I want to bring the experience rights aspect of women’s rights. dealt with by the Committee on of the last five years in particular, Development bodies like OXFAM Human Rights when they next look but also the seven years that I was are using what they call a “human at the report on the United States president of Ireland, into two tracks rights-based approach” in their under the International Covenant of the project that we’re calling the “A lively and coherent overview of development work. I’m seeing an on Civil and Political Rights. Ethical Globalization Initiative. radical and lesbian feminist ideas... encouraging linking being made Globalization itself is defined in The first track is to bring this Love and Politics should be on the between environmental activists, part by the privatization of power. technical doing of human rights reading list of all activists and aca- development experts and human National governments have less into various aspects of globaliza- demics seeking to understand how feminist theory gives perspective rights advocates. Environment power now than they did. They tion by developing a wide con- and power to strategy and action.” activists are now seeing access to have stripped themselves of a num- stituency for it and by linking part- —Charlotte Bunch (1990) clean water as an environmental ber of essential services either ners who didn’t link before. Most issue but also as a human right. because of structural adjustment or of the people I will be talking to Paper ... ISBN 0-910383-17-0... $12. Cloth ... ISBN 0-910383-18-9... $18. This didn’t exist at the Earth because of capitalist leadership. You are not human rights people. I Summit in Rio [the 1992 UN see this in areas of health, educa- want to bring this framework into Conference on Environment and tion, even prison services. So when their world. Development]. It exists now since you look to the protection of Secondly I want to focus on Johannesburg and that’s very posi- human rights, it’s not as simple as it Africa, because I don’t have to be tive. I see leadership building on seemed to be when the govern- global any more and African coun- those kinds of linkages because the ments would ratify international tries need a lot of nurturing in problems are global, they cross over human rights covenants and con- moving forward, in strengthening from one issue to another. ventions and would be the primary their own protection systems. I responsible agents. Now although learned that human rights are not AE: So you encourage working at all governments remain the primary protected by the office of the levels of society, in all sectors? responsible agents in a number of High Commissioner in Geneva. circumstances, you have to look to They are protected when you have MR: Very much so. We need to the private sector to uphold the good judges locally and when the make bridges and I’m happy to say standards of human rights. It is a police, instead of torturing, gather that modern technology lends itself new and very interesting debate. evidence to produce at trial. That to this. I think this is a way of Fortunately now there is a business- means you’ve got to have fair trial doing that women have brought led interest in corporate social and a government that can’t be forward, which has been assimilated responsibility and in supporting bought off by business. I want to into civil society groups as a whole. good governance in countries. use the commitment that African “A creative and innovative approach I found that when I was President Unless you have rule of law, relia- leaders themselves have made in to lesbian feminist theory, specifi- cally because it dares to deal with of Ireland, when women’s groups bility of contracts, reliability of the New Economic Partnership the whole question of origins in a came to see me you would hear property laws, you can’t really do for Africa’s Development. They’ve new yet rigorous way.” every voice, everybody would have business. So increasingly, business is said it’s their priority to strengthen —Janice Raymond (1986) a piece of the telling; whereas when recognizing its own interest and this their administration of justice, Paper... ISBN 0-910383-15-4 ... $12. a group led by a man would come is quite healthy in itself. their rule of law, to tackle corrup- Cloth ... ISBN 0-910383-16-2 ... $18. in, he would do the telling and But I worry about the lack of tion and to adhere fully to interna- maybe at the very end say, “Would proper protection for what I call tional human rights standards. anybody else like to add anything?” public goods: things like water. Now, at the moment, that’s rheto- I think that the women of this Because when you privatize the ric, but there’s a way of making it century must shape what most responsibility for public goods real and I believe the way is to affects this world—which is the then nobody actually takes the begin with the projects that already forces of globalization. We need responsibility to safeguard the exist in these countries. businesswomen, women who are in overall public interest. I’m getting six pilot countries to politics, local activists, we need participate. We’ve got to establish a academics and researchers all AE: It becomes even more imperative baseline. We’ll start with what is bringing their skills to address that civil society begins a very serious being done in projects for child these issues. We need women being dialogue with business. rights, women, HIV/AIDS. By put- courageous enough to say we are ting these projects forward we will no longer going to accept the MR: Yes, and it is beginning to also open them up to further sup- power game as somebody else has happen. I’ve participated in semi- port and funding. It will make it a devised it, but we are going to be nars, for example, where the extrac- positive exercise for African coun- in on the shaping. Whether it’s as tive industries, oil and mining, get tries, which means they’ll want to part of the WTO, the G8, the together with indigenous peoples. do more of it. Instead of human The Spanish translation and adap- finance ministers of the EU, or the These are not easy dialogues but rights being a finger-pointing tation of This Bridge Called My crowd protesting in the street they are very necessary because accusing, we’re going to make it a Back: Writings by Radical Women because they are disenchanted by both perspectives must be appreci- capacity-building, supportive situa- of Color. “An enriching book,” what they see about globalization. ated. We need to create more envi- tion for at least ten years, and then writes the Mexican monthly fem. ronments where indigenous peoples gradually upgrade the quality of “[The authors] analyze the racism that exists in U.S. society, inclu- AE: Do you feel that those who wield can deal directly with those who everything that is being done and ding feminist groups dominated by more power and have more influ- exercise power over them, be it fill in the gaps. I believe that if white women, and the sexism that ence should uphold a higher stan- their governments or, more and African countries can project that pervades life...” dard of human rights and integrity more, transnational corporations. they have sorted out their gover- Paper ... ISBN 0-910383-19-7...$10. simply because they’re more influen- There’s a great deal of sharing of nance, they will be much more like- Cloth ... ISBN 0-910383-20-0... $16. tial? experience now, which is very posi- ly to get the investment to bridge tive. Take the women’s movement: the digital divide, to get infrastruc- For more information or to order on MR: First, I would hold them to there’s a linking of good practices ture projects going, etc. So it’s line: www.ismpress.com. To order by the same standard of human rights. between the 117 countries that have directly in their development inter- mail, send a check to: ism press, P.O. But the responsibility to uphold ratified the six major conventions ests to do this, and I think they Box 12447-W, San Francisco, CA 94112. Postage: $2 per book. that standard is greater if you have on how to pin governments to the know this very well themselves. It’s more power and influence. That’s law. There’s a sharing of good prac- a very exciting time. I

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 11 Convinced by adoptive parents that consensus, relinquishing mothers have no strangers could become kin, social workers defense against the full cultural judgment fretted nonetheless about “how much dif- brought to bear on the ‘bad’ selfish moth- Forging the family ference” adoptive families and the com- er who rejects and abandons her child.” munities they lived in could embrace. by Sherri Broder “[F]or the most part adopters were more ven as adoptions took place in ready than social workers, co-religionists, record numbers, by the late 1960s Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption legislators and judges to transgress the E and 1970s the consensus of the boundaries of the ‘as if begotten’ family.” “best solution” was already breaking by Barbara Melosh. Cambridge: Harvard University For social workers committed to creating down. As the liberalization of sexual atti- families whose members physically resem- tudes, new forms of and Press, 2002, 326 pp., $29.95 hardcover. bled one another, race mattered greatly legal abortion broadened some women’s even as they treated it as a “matter of choices, relinquishment became shameful I appearance and social assignment rather for the white middle class, while the stig- than one of essential difference.” ma of single motherhood declined. By espite their far greater visibility, ents—viewed adoption as a limited and In the 25 years following World War 1980 less than four percent of infants adoptive families are less common inadequate response to the problems of Two, adoption gained unprecedented pub- born to single mothers were relinquished D in the US now than they were in dependent children. She chronicles social lic and professional support, as social even as the number of out-of-wedlock the 1950s. In Strangers and Kin, Barbara workers’ gradual acceptance of and influ- workers confronting rising rates of preg- births increased. Melosh tells us why, simultaneously tracing ence over the practice of adoption and nancy among single white middle-class Significantly, racial and ethnic matching the transformation of adoption over the shows how they contributed to the consol- women took a newly interventionist lost ground in the mid-1950s, “well before past century and exploring how it has idation by mid-century of a middle-class approach to illegitimacy and proclaimed the changing demographics of adoption in served as a charged site of American consensus that held adoption to be the adoption the “best solution” to the prob- the 1970s,” as social workers responding to notions of identity, motherhood, family “best solution” for white unwed mothers, lem of out-of-wedlock . the chronic shortage of foster or adoptive and nation. A professor of history and their children and infertile couples. Adoption “rescued children from illegiti- homes for African American children English who became curious about the Melosh brilliantly treats adoption as “a macy, offered a ‘fresh start’ to ‘girls in began to place black and biracial children historical origins of adoption after adopt- potent site for the expression of American trouble,’ and conferred parenthood on with parents who perceived their adoptive ing a son in the mid-1980s, Melosh elo- identity and otherness.” She recounts the infertile couples longing to join the post- families as “visible signs of their personal quently reveals how in the twentieth-cen- rise of the “as if begotten” family of the war domestic idyll.” “If the adoptive fam- commitment to postwar ideals of racial tury United States, the practice of turning mid-twentieth century, when social work- ily was ideally “as if begotten,” the out-of- integration.” Melosh examines the brief strangers into kin “became familiar, and ers sought to minimize differences among wedlock pregnancy was to be “as if for- experiment in transracial adoption of how it remains strange” even today. adoptive family members, and then details gotten.” In the 1950s, social workers African American children by white par- Strangers and Kin is based on thorough its dramatic unraveling in the 1970s and became “active agents and collaborators ents—which at its peak in 1971 represent- archival research and deft analysis of case following two decades when changing sex- in a system of sanctioned and institution- ed no more than two or three percent of all records from the Children’s Bureau of ual mores, controversies over racial match- alized deception.” Confidential adoption, adoptions, and declined precipitously after Delaware (CBD), a private, non-sectarian ing and international adoption, and chal- sealed records and amended birth certifi- the National Association of Black Social child welfare agency, as well as records lenges to closed adoption and sealed cates that hid the secrets of birth mothers, Workers declared its opposition—as well as from the National Urban League, social records combined to shatter the postwar their children and adoptive parents the adoption of American Indian children work studies, novels and an array of late adoption consensus. became standard, while maternity homes by white parents, now virtually outlawed by twentieth-century narratives written by redefined themselves as places in which to the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act that adoptive parents, birth mothers and he creation of families through law hide transgressive and to res- granted American Indians tribal control of adopted children. It is both a fascinating with the same rights and responsi- cue the spoiled identities of illegitimate child placement. In a dazzling textual analy- cultural history of twentieth-century T bilities as biological kin became mothers and their children. By 1970, the sis of fiction, media coverage, search narra- adoption in the US and a deeply informed common only gradually in the twentieth year when adoption peaked, eighty per- tives and accounts by birth mothers and study of what it reveals about shifting century. In the early 1900s, child welfare cent of children born out of wedlock adoptive parents, she assesses the various concepts of family, identity and the limits workers, considering themselves defenders were relinquished. challenges to transracial and international of American pluralism. For Melosh, adop- of children’s best interests rather than The belief that women were coerced adoption as well as the broader critique tion illuminates questions of both person- advocates for childless adults, doubted that into relinquishing infants in the 1950s and raised by the adoption rights movement. al and national identity. Because families “permanent homes could be found for 1960s, Melosh says, “has become com- Unlike those who characterize adoption constructed by choice and chance have children among strangers” and worried monplace, but it is simply not adequate as as an exchange that exploits resourceless “no inherent constraints on difference” that children would be exploited as labor- an account of women’s decisions.... Later birth mothers, or others who see it as nec- they can “be much more heterogeneous ers. In the 1920s and 1930s, a groundswell accounts by birth mothers who regretted essarily fraught with risk for all involved, than any given biological family”—thus of popular support for adoption coincided their decisions often portray the over- Melosh optimistically highlights adoption’s raising fears of boundary crossing with shifting approaches to child welfare whelming pressures of parents and experts potential to expand our notions of self, between racial, ethnic and religious groups and new attitudes toward unwed mothers who insisted on adoption. But... even at family, nation and, ultimately, global soli- among some, while allowing others to and their children. While earlier reformers the height of the best-solution rhetoric, darity. Although she agrees international envision adoption as a “hopeful harbinger saw “motherhood as both penalty and alternative narratives persisted. Many adoption can sometimes be an example of of an imagined future.” restitution for having illicit sex...a new gen- women approached [the CBD] to plan American arrogance and imperialism, she Melosh begins her account at a transi- eration of secular reformers was both less relinquishment and then changed their sides with those who believe that, while tional moment in the early twentieth cen- concerned with punishing the sinner and minds; their experiences are captured in inadequate as a comprehensive policy, tury, when child welfare workers—reluc- more concerned about the effects of such four hundred files marked ‘withdrawn.’” adoption can be an ethical and humane tant to separate mothers and children and redemption on the child.” Still, social She argues that women made difficult response to the needs of children around suspicious of the motives of adoptive par- workers were concerned that adoptive par- choices under severely constrained circum- the world orphaned or displaced by pover- ents could not “form enduring bonds with stances, choices that reveal women’s “exer- ty, war, or famine. Weighing in on racial less-than-perfect children”; they believed cise of agency” despite their later portray- matching, she notes it has left thousands NOW on the that only carefully screened children were al in birth mother narratives of the 1980s of black children in foster care, despite Women’s Review website: appropriate candidates for adoption. and 1990s as “powerless victims of cir- studies that demonstrate that outcomes of RENEW your subscription by In the 1930s and 1940s, adoption was cumstance” living in a harsh climate of transracial adoption don’t differ from Visa/MasterCard chiefly unregulated; a “pervasive sense of sexual repression. She uses archival evi- adoption outcomes in general. send us a DONATION adoption as risky... stigmatized the adopt- dence to demonstrate that some women Readers may or may not agree with order and prepay BACK ISSUES ed child as different.” While commercial actively chose relinquishment—and that Melosh’s views on relinquishment and send us your CHANGE OF ADDRESS maternity homes placed newborns with African American women who tried to transracial and international adoption, her little or no investigation, social workers were denied the opportunity—but also to challenge to many of the tenets of the notify us of a DELIVERY or BILLING problem in child welfare agencies recommended explore how postwar social workers, com- adoption rights movement with its insis- find the answers to some FRE- that infants undergo observation and mitted simultaneously to a firm belief in tence on the primacy of biological kin, and QUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS. counseled that adoptive placements relinquishment and to non-directive coun- her conclusion that adoption is once again start a NEW SUBSCRIPTION for should not take place until children were seling, struggled to insulate clients from perceived as risky. But her reasoned, assid- yourself or as a GIFT at least six months old. Although com- social and familial pressure so they could uously researched and carefully argued enter our monthly CONTEST to mercial maternity homes, other interme- come to their decisions freely. analysis is as thoughtful as readers are like- win a FREE subscription. diaries and mothers themselves contin- Melosh suggests that women looking ly to find. She is sensitive to her multiple All credit card orders are ued to place children, prospective parents backward with regret on decisions now historical subjects as well as to her differ- processed through our SECURE SERVER. attracted to social workers’ claims of thirty, forty, fifty years old are “caught ently situated readers. Strangers and Kin is We respect the PRIVACY of our expertise chose agency adoption, even between two stories, neither of which is valuable for anyone with an interest in readers and do not provide though it meant subjecting themselves to adequate to explain their experience.” She pondering how, “as it forges kinship their email addresses to any social workers’ scrutiny. writes, “[T]heir decisions were intelligi- among strangers, adoption also suggests other organization or business. If observation and testing supplied the ble—even laudable—within a context that the possibility of a more expansive com- WWW.WELLESLEY.EDU/ data for the “professional design of fami- no longer exists.... The postwar adoption munity....For if we trust that strangers can lies,” matching was a “key element in the consensus portrayed relinquishment as an become kin, then maybe we can also forge WOMENSREVIEW design of a practice that sought to improve act of love, the mark of the ‘good’ and families, communities and nations that the odds of successful adoption.” selfless mother. With the faltering of that welcome the stranger.” I

12 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 The Women’s Review of Books February 2003 Publishers’ Advertising Supplement

Our annual February advertising section is put together by the Women’s Review in conjunction with the publishers included in it, as a resource especially for teachers in search of new ideas for their own reading and for materials to adopt in their courses.

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Please send all requests to: Random House Academic Marketing, 1745 Broadway, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10019 For Desk Copies or to print out an Examination Copy order form, visit: www.randomhouse.com/academic quality. So too with the photographs. through its readability. (Passages from Many of these have been divided into the Wendell Berry’s careful, low-key essays categories “Industrial Eye” and “Agrarian open and close the book, lending it a Reaping what we sow Eye.” The comparisons these offer are grace the rest of the book sorely needs.) the equivalent of apples and oranges: by Jan Zita Grover fields shown at different times of year, in ne of Fatal Harvest’s contribu- different parts of the country, as well as tors is Alice Waters, founder of Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture long telephoto shots that compress O the Berkeley restaurant Chez space, creating enhanced images of Panisse and author of several cookbooks, edited by Andrew Kimbrell. Washington, DC: Island industrial congestion. including Chez Panisse Fruit. Her essay in For whom was this lavish volume cre- Fatal Harvest is preceded by the only pho- Press, 2002, 384 pp., $45.00 paper. ated? Surely not “the average American,” tograph in the book of something that whom editor Kimbrell characterizes as looks scrumptiously edible, something a Chez Panisse Fruit by Alice Waters. New York: “lulled into thinking food production is reader might want to eat: braided whole still localized and done on a human wheat bread, a square of buttercup-yel- HarperCollins, 2002, 327 pp., $34.94 hardcover. scale”—in other words, someone naïve, low butter bound in blooming oregano, complacent, foolish. This hypothetical and a cob, dried kernels and ground flour I “average American” gets jeered at in a of blue corn. The photo accompanies two-page spread that includes telephoto Waters’ brief plea for ethical eating and hen my father moved us from of the world’s occupation—growing shots of suburban houses compressed the return of sit-down family dinners. San Francisco to Sacramento in food for family and local use in coopera- into a nightmarish warren, parked cars Her essay is a-tremble with moral indig- W 1954, much of the floodplain tion with seasons, soils, climate, water into a wall of metal—the visual equiva- nation at industrial agriculture, not just east of the American River was planted supply, topography—has been supersed- lent of Malvina Reynolds’ “Little Boxes,” because of the ways it has debased food with hops, sweet cherries, almonds and ed by industrial agriculture, which ignores which argued that if people’s possessions and the people who produce it but English walnuts. Black walnuts, a native local conditions and local cultures in look alike, then the people owning them because it has destroyed the occasion, the species, lined county roads and could be order to produce and sell vast surpluses must also be alike. site, at which old-fashioned virtues used had for the taking. Cattle grazed the high- on the world market. This “industrial So who is this book intended for? It to get taught: lands east of the river, and in the rich mind,” as Fatal Harvest’s editor terms it, seems to be aimed at documenting abus- river-bottom soils along the Sacramento has radically changed methods of grow- es, at stirring up readers. Yet it ignores the Families eating together passed on River pigs lazed in their wallows. Behind ing foods, spawned such oddities as intel- fact that people may need to be persuad- virtues such as courtesy, kindness, the levee roads—closed each winter by lectual property rights in genetically ed rather than harangued. Most of the generosity, thrift, respect, and rev- dense tule fogs—peaty asparagus fields altered seeds, displaced indigenous farm- selections seem to assume that readers erence for the goodness of and peach and pear orchards spread ers and native species, worked hand-in- are already citizens of the People’s nature—pretty much the whole toward Highway 99 and the mouth of the hand with the chemical warfare industry Republic of Berkeley. This may be an Boy Scout package of virtues. But river into San Francisco Bay, interspersed to create pesticides and fertilizers, unintended effect of relying on excerpts: notice that William Bennett and his by brick, German-style hop kilns. destroyed critical habitat for the world’s we get dropped into the middle of more ilk don’t talk much about food; and As idyllic as this may sound, it was creatures, exhausted and salinated soils, complex arguments, as if we should that is because of a paradox at the not—never had been—farming according dried up ancient aquifers and created already know what to think. heart of political conservatism: on to an agrarian ideal. The cattle and hops local droughts, in turn producing local Though filled with seemingly interest- one hand it values old-fashioned farms owned by the family of one of my famines. At the same time, apologists for ing facts, the book’s claims often wither family virtues, but on the other it classmates, for example, ran to 1,900 acres. industrial agriculture argue that it is creat- under close scrutiny. For example, “In supports a rapacious economic sys- As far back as the 1870s, Valley wheat ing worldwide bounty, a safer food sup- 2000, 73% of all the lettuce grown in the tem that, more than any other fac- farmers tilled and harvested on an indus- ply, more choices for “consumers” and United States was iceberg”—is that 73 tor, is responsible for the disap- trial scale using sixteen-horse teams. benefits for the remains of the wild. percent by weight, by number of heads, pearance of these values. (p. 348) The California farms of my childhood None of this is news to readers inter- by wholesale dollars earned, by retail dol- were the nation’s most industrialized, and ested in the politics of food and conser- lars earned—73 percent by what? We’re This is the voice that, along with we school-children were expected to rec- vation. Fatal Harvest differs from other told that the vast majority of varieties of Wendell Berry’s, makes the individual ognize and rejoice in this fact. Social stud- conservationist/environmentalist attacks tomatoes, lettuce, corn and apples was stakes of industrial agriculture manifest. ies textbooks used in the state’s public on industrialized agriculture in three lost between 1903 and 1983—with what After 340-odd pages of statistics-filled schools in the 1950s boasted of the scope, respects: it does not weave a continuous seems scientific precision, we read that contributions by scientists and global economies and triumphant capitalism narrative from its strands, it relies more 80.6 percent of varieties of tomatoes activists, Waters’ voice seems almost embodied in feed-lot cattle, citrus and let- on full-bleed photographs for a coherent and +86.2 percent of apples have been wispy and naked, overpersonal. But like tuce production, Diamond Brand nuts. argument than on its mostly dry and sta- “lost.” But how does the book define the small project she has funded in School-children were taught to view tistics-filled essays and it is almost per- lost? It doesn’t. Berkeley, CA—the Edible Garden at Florida’s industrial agriculture as a rival, versely unreaderly. Understand that I am no fan of the Martin Luther King middle school—her but a weak rival, for Florida suffered from This is the seventh oversized book industrial agriculture that has turned short piece possesses all the virtues that enervating heat, smallness and “conceived and directed” (says the fly- much of California’s Central Valley into Fatal Harvest’s heavy guns lack. It is mod- Southernness. California was America’s leaf) by Douglas Tompkins, former CEO the literal and figurative brownfields est, specific, focuses on the positive industrial garden, so my fourth-grade text- of The North Face and Esprit. I they’ve become in my lifetime. But I things that people can do collectively and book said, and no other state could rival its reviewed one of Tompkins’ earlier pro- value careful arguments and responsible speaks plainly. ability to pump out strawberries, lettuce, ductions, Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial use of photographs, and Fatal Harvest I’ve toured the Edible Garden and asparagus, grapes, celery, garlic, nuts, Forestry (1993) when it was published, and deploys both of these casually. It preach- seen how well loved and used it is. Like oranges, rice, beef, turkey, chicken, eggs. I was perplexed then as now by how es to (many) choirs rather than construct- The Garden of Eatin’ in Philadelphia Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was the resistant such lavish books are to actual ing a systematic survey, never mind one (another community garden discussed in first widely read book to challenge this reading. Both volumes’ brief essays are that might attract an audience in part Fatal Harvest), the Edible Garden is a idealization of American industrial agri- long on sludgy prose and overwhelmed culture. A decade later in 1973, Frances by immense, full-bleed photographs. Moore Lappe’s popular Diet for a Small Their arguments depend heavily on the University of California, Santa Barbara Planet moved Carson’s argument onto emotions stirred up by larger-than-nor- Department of Black Studies consumerist grounds by arguing for a mal images and seem aimed more at audi- Dissertation Fellowship for 2003 -2004 pattern of food buying, cooking and eat- ences who look at pictures than at those ing that rejected industrial farming’s who read. Eligibility: Advanced to candidacy at an accredited university products in favor of what was local, Here is a passage from editor Andrew Two Fellowships are available to assist scholars whose research focuses on modest and low on the food chain. More Kimbrell’s introduction: “This great areas significant to African, Caribbean and/or African -American Studies. recently, Eric Schlosser’s best-selling Fast physical and psychological distance Applicants from all disciplines are encouraged, including humanities, social Food Nation grappled with the daunting between consumer and food production sciences, sciences and interdisciplinary fields. Recipients are required to be in evidence that this revolution didn’t hap- creates a tragic disconnect between the residence at UC Santa Barbara dur ing the 2003 -2004 academic year, to teach pen: instead of embracing modest, grain- general public and the social and envi- one undergraduate course and to present one public lecture. There is an based fare, last year US citizens spent ronmental consequences of the food expectation that the dissertation will be completed during residence. Stipend: $110 billion on fast food. Schlosser’s being grown and eaten.” What does this $20,000. book deftly eviscerated the industry that mean? The distance between eaters and To apply: Submit curriculum vitae, a brief descript ion of the dissertation purveys it, from contract cattle growers farmers creates distance between eaters project, a writing sample (approx. 25 pages) and 3 letters of reference to: in the Amazon to stateside minimum- and farming? Professor Cedric J. Robinson, Chair, Dissertation Fellowship Committee, wage counter workers. Part of the problem with the book’s Department of Black Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA text is that it is made up of excerpts from 93106-3150. nter Fatal Harvest, an immense, previously published articles, reports and Applications by e -mail or fax will not be accepted. Review of applications will two-and-a-half-pound book (its books. Too many of the selections have begin March 1, 2003 and deadline for applications is March 15, 2003 . E publisher calls it “exhibit-format”) been detached from the contexts that on roughly the same topic. Its argument originally gave them depth and specifici- The University of California is an is by now familiar: what was once most ty. Here, they possess a floaty, untethered Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 13 © Aya Brackett the skin is full of flavor.) Cut the quarters into 1/2-inch chunks. Put them in a saucepan and add apple juice or cider to a depth of Giant garbage, unsold goods 1/2 inch. Simmer, covered, over medium heat, stirring occasional- by Kimberly Shearer Palmer ly, for 20 to 30 minutes, until the apples are cooked through, soft, Womansword: What Japanese Words Say About Women and translucent. If you like apple- sauce smooth, pass it through a by Kittredge Cherry. New York: Kodansha International, food mill. Taste for sweetness; it may need a little lemon juice. 2002, 150 pp., $16.00 paper. Serve warm with a dollop of crème fraîche or with pan-fried I pork chops. (p. 5) ithin five minutes of meeting waits as passively as a grocery-store Though most recipes involve more the landlord of my Tokyo tomato hoping a customer will buy it ingredients, they’re no more complicated: W apartment, I was lost. The syl- before it rots.” While this passivity may Spit-roasted Pork with Onion-and-Apple lables sounded like the familiar Japanese have reflected reality in feudal times, Alice Waters Marmalade, Apricot Galette, Cherry I knew, but I couldn’t understand him at women today want a sexier word for Clafoutis, Apple Huckleberry Crisp, Crab all. The gruff, masculine Japanese he was unmarried life, and have started using project that can be adapted anywhere Salad with Meyer Lemon, Endive, and speaking was not what I had been taught the English word “singles.” with would-be gardeners and gardening Watercress. Waters notes mildly that she by my young, female teachers. Japanese A chapter on sexuality illuminates the space. It isn’t agriculture, in either the hasn’t cross-referenced recipes calling men and women, I soon learned, speak undercurrents of hidden sex, both com- agrarian or industrial sense, but it can be for, say, peaches, “because we think you different versions of the same language. mercial and private: prostitutes go by the a neighborhood response to anomie, lack can figure out for yourself that peach In Womansword, Kittredge Cherry sys- euphemism “soap ladies” from their of healthful food, lack of connection recipes work equally well with nec- tematically explores gender-specific association with bathhouses, and door- with growing things and other people. tarines... and that blackberries can stand Japanese words and phrases and effec- to-door sellers, who enable This end-of-book focus on the particu- in for boysenberries.” Sadly, pressure tively uses them as a starting point to married women to buy condoms in the lars of city gardening projects is a wel- seems to have been brought to bear on understand sexism in Japanese culture. privacy of their homes, are called “skin come anodyne to the global perspectives her make concessions to the dumbing The book is organized like an encyclope- ladies.” Cherry writes, “The customers that occupy all but a handful of Fatal down of cookbooks. Chez Panisse Fruit dia: each entry contains a rich, historical tend to be so embarrassed about birth Harvest’s pages. For a book that con- forgoes Waters’ old-fashioned measuring explanation of the phrase and its rele- control that they gladly pay higher prices demns industrial agriculture and pleads methods—like one of her guiding spirits, vance today. The somewhat disorienting to avoid being seen purchasing in public. for its agrarian replacement, there’s pre- Elizabeth David, she is wont to call for title belies an accessible, well-researched Moreover, they don’t want to endure the cious little space given over to demon- “butter the size of a walnut,” a smidge of and entertaining book. encounter with the skin lady any more strations of what such an agriculture this, a dash of that—in favor of “the Consider the proposal of marriage. often than necessary. So they buy a one- might look like. And there, I think, lies its standard American recipe-writing for- “Oshikake nyobo,” which Cherry trans- or two-year supply of big, economically weakness: attacking generalized, global mat, measured spoonfuls and all.” It’s lates as “intruder wives,” describes priced ‘family packs’ of condoms.” industrial agriculture without offering hard not to view this as further evidence women who ask men to marry them, modest, grainy particulars in its stead that many kitchens no longer have cooks instead of waiting to be asked. “Often nlike the outpouring of books makes for a mostly bleak picture. in them—just folks who like to imagine they are energetic women who set their on modern Japan that focus on Alice Waters’ cookbooks have been themselves cooking. At an even more hearts on indecisive men, then maintain U geishas or other subservient the butt of jokes by food writers who basic level, for example, the recent Betty the will and pep to lavish loving care on images of women, Womansword embraces think her ingredients are too precious. It’s Crocker Cookbook includes photographs them after marriage,” Cherry writes. “At a more accurate, complicated vision of true that her recipes often call for food- to show what well scrambled eggs look least among women, the word arouses Japanese womanhood. Some words illu- stuffs that aren’t available in like, and defines and illustrates the stages more admiration than blame, for an minate women’s strength and beauty, but Massachusetts, Minnesota, Georgia: of butter from refrigerator-hard to soft intruder wife must be brave to carry out not without derision, such as the word Washington State olallieberries, say, or to melted. What’s next—how to her tactics.” Yet intruder wives are on the for “old woman” which combines the Meyer lemons, Arctic Glo nectarines, microwave a frozen entrée? decline: According to a government sur- characters for “woman” and “wave,” Sun Crest peaches. Their criticism is A good cookbook elicits involvement, vey, over ten percent of rural and subur- evoking the ripples of wrinkles on an disingenuous because it ignores Waters’ and from it can stream the activism that ban women proposed to their husbands older woman’s face. A woman’s uterus is point: her chief ingredients are whatever characterized readers of Diet for a Small in the late 1940s, but that number fell to a “child’s palace,” which connotes is delicious and in season. Any cook Planet. Waters’ books are less popular in three percent by the 1960s. respect, but with the implication that worth her salt will replace the California their approach than Lappe’s because they The phrases often allude to controver- women do not own their own bodies. varieties that Waters rhapsodizes over celebrate what is now termed “Slow sial political issues, such as the Equal Cherry also describes affirming cul- with something equally ripe and luscious Food”—cooking that focuses on meth- Employment Opportunity Law (“danjo tural traditions. The phrase “unseeing from her own garden or market. ods and materials that cannot be rushed, koyo kikai kinto ho”), established in water-babies,” she explains, refers to an That said, the recipes and descriptions exported, mass-produced. This sets them Japan in 1986. Before the law, women aborted fetus, and the tradition of heal- in Chez Panisse Fruit are mostly unfussy against the grain of contemporary US were limited to working within certain set ing the psychological trauma of abortion and accessible. Few readers outside of life, unlike Diet for a Small Planet, which hours, after which they were required to by paying homage to water-baby statues wine-growing regions are likely to make recognized the pace of most contempo- go home. Even more surprisingly, per- at Buddhist temples. The title of the or find verjuice (“the sour juice of green, rary lives with its swiftly made casseroles haps, women had been given time off book itself pays homage to the Japanese unripe wine grapes”), but Waters recom- and stir-fries. each month for menstruation leave since tradition of women, particularly the mends few other ingredients that a com- Waters’ cuisine is open to the charge 1947. The law, at least in theory, ended daughters of samurai warriors, fighting mitted cook can’t track down or find a of elitism, for one of its most prodigally these forms of different treatment for with actual swords. local substitute for in season. Each fruit used ingredients is time, and we are told women. Using statistics from the Many of Cherry’s translations are is described in detail—its wild prove- that none of us has much of that any Organization for Economic Cooperation intentionally funny. In Japanese, domi- nance, seasons, locations and tastiest cul- more and that time is money. It would be and Development, Cherry suggests that nating women are said to “sit” on their tivars. Waters writes that her recipes are more accurate, though, to view her food this law led to an increase in employers’ husbands. “The Japanese version of the “essentially conservative, based on the as agrarian cookery. It reflects the pat- reluctance to hire women because they henpecked husband is a man flattened principle that you don’t want to confuse terns of time that small-scale farm wives now had to treat them equally, and had out under his wife’s massive buttocks.... the flavor of good fruit.” once had: long winters indoors that gave the unfortunate effect of raising the The figure of speech includes the criti- The fine flavors of northern rise to long-simmering stews, fruit- and wage gap between men and women. cism that the woman’s rump is too fat, California’s local fruits shine from the vegetable-based summer dishes and can- Some of the most intriguing entries otherwise her man would be able to top- pages of Waters’ book. I read the ning rushed from gardens and orchards relate to the interactions between men ple her authority,” writes Cherry. Her wit recipes, and I can smell the rosemary in brief, glorious overdrive. and women. Women refer to retired and penchant for literal translations hedges lining Berkeley gardens, see the It is an odd and wonderful fact that husbands as “giant garbage” because make for engaging reading. She inter- Mission fig trees bowed to the ground northern California now boasts more “they mope aimlessly around the house, prets the word for subway harassers, with black dusty fruit each August, taste small farms and orchards than it did in good for nothing, always getting in the “,” as “molesting fools.” She calls the full, acidless juice of thin-skinned my childhood, and Alice Waters and way,” writes Cherry. Wives also call their sex education “purity education”; sex Meyer lemons. These simple recipes other Bay Area cooks are the engines of retired spouses “unlabeled canned becomes “mixing heart and life”; female depend on what industrial agriculture this recent development. They have goods” since they have been “stripped of virgins are “home girls.” cannot offer—what is local and specific, made it possible for cheesemakers, truck the company name that provided their Still, these translations often illumi- the quality that used to be known as gardeners, growers of tender, nonmar- identity.” Japanese, we learn, includes nate disturbing beliefs and practices. genius loci. Here, for example, is the recipe ket-variety stone fruits to earn a living insults for both genders. Widows are often called “the not-yet- for applesauce: from their passion. Fatal Harvest touches Just as in English, there is a plethora dead people.” Cherry says that originally on this story but does not animate it; of words for single young women. They the word implied “that once a woman’s Quarter and core tasty apples. Chez Panisse Fruit brings the story into are often called “unsold goods,” which husband is dead, she has outlived her (Peel if you wish, but remember, your own kitchen. I Cherry says “implies that the woman purpose and has nothing left to do but

14 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 await death herself.” Similarly, “Mount know that birth control pills are now Granny Abandonment” refers to the legal in Japan, or that sexual harassment practice of leaving grandmothers on top is taken much more seriously nowadays of mountains to die and stop draining than twenty years ago. She uses a 1986 Fertility goddess their families’ limited resources. survey to show how is While widows today can live full lives increasingly accepted; surely attitudes by Lisa Marcus and families no longer abandon their have shifted even more by now. The grandmothers, the sexism behind many comprehensive Foreword by Janet Conquering Infertility: Dr. Alice Domar’s Mind/Body Guide of these phrases lingers. One of my best Ashby, also a journalist in Japan, pro- friends’ mothers never sat with us for vides some updates. to Enhancing Fertility and Coping with Infertility dinner; she stayed in the kitchen and ate Overall, however, Cherry does for there because traditionally, women Japanese what The New York Times’ by Alice Domar and Alice Lesch Kelly. New York: served and didn’t eat at the table. Still, William Safire does for English: analyzes traditions are changing. My girlfriend what Japanese words tell us about Viking, 2002, 320 pp., $24.95 hardcover. explicitly told me she didn’t plan on being Japanese culture. For readers who range I “traditional” like her mother, an attitude from fluent Japanese speakers to those shared by many young Japanese women. who have barely even heard of sushi, she y mother is a feminist academ- So, do I regret this path? Do I blame my Luckily, many of these older phrases no elucidates the peculiar, engendered ic who struggled to finish a infertility on my desire to divorce destiny longer reflect life in twenty-first-century phrases that are too easily taken for M Ph.D and find a job while from biology, to nurture a career rather than Japan and are used less frequently. The granted. Even someone who has lived in negotiating the demands of three small a child? Not for a minute. But the popular only phrases I recognized from daily con- Japan, for example, may be surprised to children. I learned from her example press is doing a number on women who’ve versation related to the workplace, single learn that sushi chefs are almost exclu- that motherhood would be best put off delayed motherhood. Last year a media young women and sexuality. sively men because of the superstition until I, also following an academic path, campaign launched by the American Society Cherry recognizes that language con- that “sushi will spoil at the touch of a had finished graduate school, gotten a for featured an stantly evolves. She skillfully intertwines woman’s warm, perfumed hands.” Or job and perhaps even attained the secu- inverted baby bottle shaped like an hour- history with the present, often reaching that women blackened their teeth with rity of tenure. Like many women of my glass with the time running out. Alarmist into the Edo (1603 to 1868) and Meiji iron rust, tea, sake and vinegar upon third-wave feminist generation, I wanted messages, epitomized by Sylvia Ann (1868 to 1912) periods for word origins. marriage until the nineteenth century, to carve out a professional and intellec- Hewlett’s woman-blaming Creating a Life: Her explanation of beauty ideals, for because “teeth were considered a repul- tual life long before I ever imagined par- Professional Women and the Quest for Children, example, spans centuries. Even today, sively exposed part of the skeleton.” enting a child. have rightly prompted a feminist response she writes, the nape of a woman’s neck Just as an encyclopedia provides snip- At 37, newly tenured and enjoying the to this obvious backlash that directs women under her kimono is considered the pets of the bigger picture, Womansword real privilege of my first sabbatical, I find to see to their motherhood. most erotic part of the body. She gives us the dots but leaves us to connect myself studying fertility manuals as much Women in situations like mine are explains that “more than , but- them. Cherry doesn’t give us her overall as literary criticism, more obsessed with increasingly turning to support groups tocks, or legs, the nape exuded sensuali- impression of Japanese women in an egg quality and the results of tests than based on the work of Harvard psychologist ty.... her nape was often hidden beneath opening or closing chapter, which would with scholarly archives. My sabbatical year Alice Domar, whose Mind/Body Program her ebony mane, so when a woman put have helped provide a framework, espe- has been divided into in-vitro fertilization for infertile women (and, minimally, for up her hair, it caused the same delicious cially for readers who know little about cycles; when colleagues inquire how my their partners) has spawned a veritable pitter-pat that Westerners may feel when Japanese culture. She addresses larger sabbatical projects are going, I am tempted industry of similar groups across the coun- they spot a woman in a low-cut dress.” trends within the culture only in passing, to reply “Fifteen eggs this month! A bit try. With a series of books popularizing the In the mid-1980s, she tells us, a popular for example, the increasing number of sore from the shots! A hormonal roller- Mind/Body approach, Domar has become Japanese woman’s magazine printed young women who reject sexist Japanese coaster ride!” a kind of “fertility goddess,” an honorific photos of celebrities showing off the offices in favor of foreign firms, and the napes of their necks. increasing number of young women who choose not to get married. She also t’s hard to imagine a more qualified focuses almost exclusively on main- INDIANA UNIVERSITY linguist than Cherry for this job. As stream issues such as beauty, marriage, Chair, Department of Gender Studies I a journalist in Japan, she has worked children, office life and old age; lesbian for feminist and mainstream magazines, culture gets shrunk into one entry and at one point writing a regular column on contemporary slang is all but ignored. Japanese words. Her authority on the Womansword reminds readers how The Department of Gender Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, subject and strong reporting skills bene- unequal things still are for women in invites applications and nominations for the position of Professor and fit the book, as does her ability to spice Japan, and why prominent politicians Chair of the department. Applicants and nominees should have a distin- up historical background with references like Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara guished record of research and teaching and administrative experience. A to glossy women’s magazines. can still say things like “Women are use- The book’s main shortcoming, how- less after they pass childbearing age,” as demonstrated commitment to interdisciplinary work in the field of ever, is that even its most recent surveys he did at the end of 2002. As Cherry Gender Studies is essential. The department faculty numbers eleven full are at least fifteen years old, a surprising shows, words themselves often illumi- and joint appointments. Authorization to recruit new faculty will be avail- weakness in an otherwise well- nate the double standards by which able in order to enhance the department and facilitate new initiatives. researched book. Cherry doesn’t seem to women live. I The faculty of Gender Studies undertakes critical interdisciplinary scruti- ny of masculinity and femininity. Its research, teaching, and service Chair entail intellectual interfaces between feminist theory, gender analysis, Department of Maternal and Child Health and the work of other knowledge areas. Current faculty research and teaching center thematically upon the body, sexualities, gendered identi- ties and discourses, and their institutional regulation. This exploration The School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel has led Gender Studies to forge links with other campus units, including Hill, invites applications for the position of Chair, Department of the Kinsey Institute. IUB’s Gender Studies Department is distinctive in Maternal and Child Health. The Chair will be appointed to a tenure track including faculty not only in the arts and humanities, but also in the position at the full professor level and lead a department that has 20 full- social, behavioral, and natural sciences. The department instituted an time faculty, 90 graduate students in master’s and doctoral programs, and undergraduate major in 1997 and now has some 66 majors and growing $7 million dollars in research funding. Candidates should have a distin- enrollments (approximately 2000 in 2002-2003). Plans for the MA and guished record of research, teaching, professional and public service, and PhD are under way. administration. Review of applications will begin immediately and con- Applicants should send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, and the tinue until the position is filled. names of five persons who can be contacted as references. Address to: For more information, see www.sph.unc.edu/mhch. Please submit Professors M. Jeanne Peterson and Stephen Watt, Co-Chairs, Gender applications to Diane Rogers, Department of Maternal and Child Health, Studies Search Committee, College of Arts and Sciences, 104 Kirkwood School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Hall, Bloomington, IN 47405-7104. Review of all materials will begin March 1, 2003. Email: [email protected] or [email protected]. CB# 7445, Rosenau Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7445.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is an Equal Opportunity, ADA Visit our Web site at: www.indiana.edu/~gender. Indiana University is Employer. Members of minority groups and women are strongly encouraged to apply. an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer.

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 15 bestowed upon her by Vogue magazine and sophisticated and substantive approach to proudly trumpeted on the dust jacket of the science of infertility. Conquering Infertility. I should admit from the As a feminist I’ve been trained to look start that I have worshipped at the temple of outward, to politicize the personal, not to A checkered career this goddess, religiously following her pro- turn inward and privatize my experiences. gram of relaxation techniques, self-reflec- While I have benefited from, and am deeply by Judith Barrington tion and group support. As a “graduate” of grateful for, the Mind/Body program’s a Domar-inspired Mind/Body Program focus on personal healing, I cannot help but Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir by Lillian Faderman. held at the University of Washington note that the wounds Domar’s program Fertility and Endocrine Center, I hope to be hopes to heal need to be analyzed as symp- New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003, 356 pp., $26.00 hardcover. one of her positive statistics. toms of larger cultural pathologies. For one In one of Domar’s studies, published in thing, I want to ask why women facing I Fertility and Sterility, 55 percent of infertile infertility experience the same kind of stress women conceived and carried a baby to as those facing a cancer or an AIDS diagno- hrough the life of one woman, © Phyllis Irwin term within a year after completing a sis. It’s one thing to treat the underlying Naked in the Promised Land captures Mind/Body program while only 20 percent depression, but it’s another to look at the T the history of an era. One lesbian’s of the women in the control group achieved culture that sanctifies motherhood and— fear of her own sexuality and her struggle a live birth. While Domar acknowledges even in this new millennium—holds up to balance her need for family with her that “mind/body techniques aren’t a magic maternity as the only real prize of feminini- desire for an independent life represent, in wand that will make you pregnant,” she is ty. None of the infertility gurus (or god- many ways, the story of American homo- convinced that “women’s minds must be treated desses) are pushing women to explore and phobia and sexism, taken for granted in the along with their bodies.” Over her years of direct their righteous anger toward a culture 1950s and ‘60s. It is as if Lillian Faderman research into the connections between that, though glorifying so-called family val- had added a personal example to the histo- infertility, stress and depression, she com- ues, pitches parenthood as a single-sex affair ry she unfolded in her last book, Odd Girls pared the depression levels of patients with and defines the task of reproduction as and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life heart disease, cancer and HIV-positive sta- exclusively women’s work. in Twentieth-Century America. tus with those of women diagnosed with This leads me to a blatant hole in the Naked in the Promised Land also speaks infertility. She was confronted with an Mind/Body program: men are curiously for a generation of American Jews whose “astounding finding”—“the infertile absent and largely invisible. In a startlingly parents were damaged survivors of the women were every bit as depressed as the old-fashioned way, the landscape of infer- Holocaust, whether they themselves sur- people who were confronting illnesses that tility remains a woman’s domain. Even vived the camps or lost beloved family could kill them!” This confirmed her belief though 35 percent of infertility is caused by members to the Nazis. As the title implies, that “alleviating depression and other psy- a male factor, women are still held account- it is a quintessentially American story: it’s Lillian Faderman chological distress in infertile women” able for their failure to reproduce, and the unlikely that Faderman’s trajectory from would improve their chances for pregnancy: grief of infertility is largely perceived and difficult childhood to university professor up girl, posing nude and later working in a hence the birth of the Mind/Body Program treated as a woman’s problem. could have happened anywhere else. burlesque chorus. Still nursing Hollywood for infertility. The program revolves around Domar includes a chapter on unmarried At the center of this powerful story is acting ambitions, she tries to save enough ten two-and-a-half-hour sessions designed women, a chapter she titles “Special Cases,” Faderman’s rejection of the life envisaged for a nose job and, with her Aunt Rae’s to provide group support and to teach but the whole Mind/Body Program, and for her by a seriously unhappy and pos- help, manages to get one. But constantly hit women to elicit a physically and emotional- this book in particular, is very much geared sessive mother. Mary believed that her on by men, she comes to see the advantages ly healing “relaxation response” through toward a married heterosexual audience. brother was lame because she dropped of staying in school and aims for a college techniques such as meditation, yoga and This presumption of in the him as a baby—and that she was respon- degree—and then for a doctorate. Her life focused breathing. infertile population erases the many lesbians sible for failing to get him and the rest of becomes infinitely complicated when she who seek advanced fertility treatment. her family out of Latvia before they were starts falling in love with women; for a short onquering Infertility is the Mind/Body While the clinic I attend has many lesbian all killed. Haunted by the past, she had time, she is married to a gay man, for program in a box. Designed to fol- clients, including my colleague who had “spells,” which the young Lillian tried to respectability and, perhaps, a little love. C low Domar’s ten-session format as twins with her partner’s donated eggs, the nurse her through, taking on a responsi- Although she frequents lesbian bars and closely as possible, it tries to reproduce the Mind/Body program often serves a homo- bility for her wounded parent that would lives with more than one woman lover, experience for readers without access to geneous and heterosexual community. stretch far into adult life. Faderman never really has a triumphant one of her programs. A good portion of Domar pays lip-service to the challenges Here is Faderman’s recollection of her “coming out.” In her work life and at home the program is devoted to training patients that lesbians and single straight women face, mother’s condition: with her mother and aunt, she lies, seeking in relaxation methods, methods that are and recognizes that “the infertile world is to keep the support of those she loves and teachable and thus translate well in the very much set up for the couple—peek into I could tell by looking at my moth- who love her, and opting not to cut herself instructions offered in the book. But the the waiting room of just about any infertili- er’s face when a bad time was com- off from them or hurt them more than group support that comes from meeting ty clinic, and you’ll see a Noah’s Ark-like ing: there would be a deep flush on they have already been hurt. That she has regularly with others who share your infer- lineup of couples, two by two,” but she neg- her cheeks and neck and chest, and to make such a choice, with all its frustra- tility—who have had to spread their legs lects to address single women or lesbians in her mouth would change. She’d tions and difficulties, disappointments and too many times for too many doctors, the bulk of her book, generally assuming keep swallowing her lips, or she’d sacrifices, again signals the way the book whose bruised abdomens and needle- that there are partners, and of the male vari- spit out an imaginary speck that reflects the larger story of lesbian life in the marked bottoms mirror your own, who’ve ety. And while it goes without saying that would not be gone from her mid-twentieth century. endured multiple miscarriages and stressed infertility cuts across race and class, in the tongue. Her eyes would change too. Eventually, Faderman decides to have a relationships, who’ve given up on god, who United States—whose insurance system, Someone else looked out from child—the grandchild her mother has are filled with rage and grief, but also unlike those in many industrialized coun- them, a person who barely saw me, begged for, the child who represents a hope—this support is perhaps the most tries, largely does not cover infertility—the not even when I stood in her line future that will balance the losses of the valuable and irreproducible aspect of luxury of pursuing expensive fertility treat- of sight to distract her attention past. Neither her mother nor Rae question Domar’s program. No book can substitute ments is reserved for the privileged, a fact from the terrors in her head. (p. 40) the fictitious marriage to an absent hus- for the community that somewhat incredi- that Domar underplays. band with which Faderman explains the bly emerges when women who wouldn’t In the four years since my infertility diag- Luckily Faderman was close to her only baby, and, without being told explicitly have chosen each other, chance members nosis, I’ve been greedily collecting books other relative, her mother’s sister, Rae, that she is a lesbian, they accept the pres- of a group they would rather not belong to about infertility and advanced reproductive whom she loved with a passion equal to the ence of Phyllis, her partner and co-parent. in the first place, find themselves thrown technologies. I’ve lurked in chatrooms on one she felt for her mother. Rae did not together in a patchwork sisterhood. the Internet, tried to decipher studies in fer- need taking care of and, in fact, proved at ne of the things that impresses me It’s unfair, of course, to expect a book tility journals and combed the press (mostly crucial junctures to be a lifeline, giving about this story is the determina- to reproduce such community. Yet even in vain) for feminist analyses of the infertili- Faderman a little money to help her O tion with which Faderman solved given the limits of what can be packaged ty “epidemic.” What I have found is a wealth through college and accepting her choices her various predicaments from a very between the covers of a book, women who of informative and often inspiring accounts, even though, like her sister, she couldn’t young age. When she realized that she was- are already immersed in fertility issues may always concluding with the gauzy haze of a understand or approve of them. These two n’t immediately going to make it as an actor, be disappointed by other aspects of Hollywood ending—a bouncing, healthy, recent immigrants, who spoke Yiddish and she found her way into modeling. When Domar’s study, though women who are biological baby. Who among the infertile wore themselves out in sweatshop work, modeling threatened to become an end in just beginning to confront their infertility doesn’t long for this resolution? But what I were frequently an embarrassment to itself and she was in danger of dropping will find it an invaluable introduction to still want, and what our culture probably “Lilly,” as they called her. But the immensi- out of high school at sixteen, she called up her groundbreaking program. The book is, needs at this moment, is a feminist fertility ty of their love far outweighed their inabil- her reliable instinct for taking the right path frankly, pitched too much to a popular manifesto. Domar’s book, and the many ity to help her seize the opportunities of and, without anyone to think it through audience. Domar apologizes for belaboring self-help books like it on the market, do not America. Without that love, Faderman with, decided to get herself some help: her readers with research data she pre- fill this need, nor do they attempt to. If would probably have failed to create the sumes will bore them, but women involved infertility is, as Domar reports, a “major successful life she eventually achieved. I opened the Yellow Pages to in fertility treatments (even scientifically health problem in the United States,” solu- Desperately trying to save her mother Psychologists and with a steeled challenged women, like myself) quickly tions to the conflicts surrounding fertility from her grueling life and from mental ill- finger dialed a number. become lay-experts in this evolving med- and parenthood cannot be solved by medi- ness, Faderman tries to become a film star, When Dr. Sebastian Cushing ical field, and will likely crave a more cine or meditation alone. I but ends up instead earning money as a pin- heard that I was only sixteen and

16 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 my family had no money, he told me about a counselor who was hired by the Rotary Club to talk to underprivileged youths in trouble. When had I not been an under- The analyst’s analyst privileged youth in trouble? “But his clients are mostly male by Christine Froula juvenile delinquents.” Dr. Cushing oozed sympathy over the phone. Analyzing Freud: Letters of H.D., Bryher and Their Circle “That’s okay, I’m a juvenile delinquent, even though I’m a girl,” edited by Susan Stanford Friedman. New York: New I told him truthfully, and scribbled Mr. Maurice Colwell’s number on Directions, 2002, 615 pp., $39.95 hardcover. the yellow page. (p. 165) I Faderman has proved to be an invalu- able scholar of lesbian history and an able hat was it like to be psycho- Bryher was born Annie Winifred writer of nonfiction. Naked in the Promised analyzed by Sigmund Freud? Ellerman, the illegitimate daughter of Land exhibits a similarly competent narra- W In the spring of 1933 and Britain’s wealthiest shipping magnate. tive style. She manages to capture the fall of 1934, the American expatriate She had fallen in love with H. D. after emotions and thoughts of her young self poet Hilda Doolittle—H. D.— reading her Imagist poems Sea Garden extremely well, but I found myself wish- sojourned in Vienna for sessions with and helped nurse her back to health ing for more reflection on the part of the the founder of psychoanalysis. When from near-fatal pneumonia during her H.D. From Analyzing Freud. adult narrator, who remains almost entire- they began she was 46, stranded as a pregnancy with Perdita in 1919. H. ly invisible. For example, in describing her writer and tormented by wartime mem- D.—or “Kat,” as she signs herself— in his statues than in himself. From early involvement in creating the new field ories. She had already worked with two reports daily to Bryher (“Fido”), back behind her head he beats his hand on of women’s studies, she says, “In later analysts and would later compare her home in Switzerland. Bryher too was the pillow of the analytic couch, saying, years our passion came to seem excessive, experience to that of a music student undergoing analysis (with Hanns “I am an old man. You do not think it but in 1970 it felt exactly right.” Here, I taking lessons first with a good teacher, Sachs) and aspired to become an ana- worth your while to love me.” He stirs want to know more of her current then with a master, finally with a lyst (earn a “dog-collar”) during this guilty pleasure and anxiety in H. D. by thoughts on the subject, want her to genius. Freud—called “Papa” in the period; while visiting H. D., she confid- his avidity for “dirt” on Havelock Ellis expand this intriguing piece of retrospec- letters—was just turning 77, frail after ed to Freud her fervent belief that “if (with whose urolagnia H. D. is inti- tion—but she simply picks up the narra- operations for throat cancer. With all England were analysed the world mately acquainted) and others. On his tive and describes how the passion of Hitler in power in Germany, Dollfuss would be reformed,” making him roar birthday his study fills with flowers 1970 felt back then. struggling to preserve Austria from with laughter. Bryher would soon from innumerable friends and admir- I also find myself confused by the civil strife and Nazi domination, and become a patron of the International ers. H. D. has tried in vain to find an short italicized passages in the present Europe intermittently on the verge of Psycho-analytical Press and the antique statue—asking Bryher, “Do tense. This switch from past to present, war, he and his family were living with Viennese Psycho-Analytical Society as you happen to know how one would go presumably to create a vivid scene which uncertainty and danger. well as a friend and protector of the about finding him a goddess?”—and stands out from the surrounding narrative, H. D.’s readers will be familiar with Freuds. brings nothing. When Yo-fi gets into a has become popular in memoir. It works her earlier accounts of her work with Bryher is an active, loving audience fight with another of the household well in Vivian Gornick’s classic, Fierce Freud: the 1956 Tribute to Freud (com- for H. D.’s epistolary confidences. “But dogs during one session, Freud flings Attachments, where the author’s walks with posed of her 1945-1946 memoir Writing Kat darling,” she writes, “It’s a bad kitten himself on the floor between them, her mother around New York come into on the Wall and Advent, based on a diary not to lie down in p.a. and do what Papa coins falling from his pockets and vivid focus when she switches to the pres- she kept in her first three weeks in tells it. HOW dare you not obey? I was rolling under the orchids as Anna ent tense. But in Faderman’s book, many Vienna but broke off when Freud asked most obedient—only IN pa of course to Freud rushes in “screaming in German of the italicized sections are no different her not to take notes) and a poem “The all that Turtle [Sachs] told me. One has ‘papalein belovestest, thou shoudst not in perspective or content from what pre- Master” (written by 1935, published the day for disobedience apres!” Along have done that.’” Freud receives Bryher cedes and follows them. (And at least once posthumously), her homage to the “old with Kenneth Macpherson (“Dog”), when she visits H. D. and they praise when the italics end the tense doesn’t man” who “set [her] free to prophesy.” Bryher’s second husband and H. D.’s for- H. D.’s beautiful mind, making “Kat’s switch back to the past.) To this record Susan Stanford mer lover, and Perdita (“Pup”), whom tail... one spike of esteem.” Bryher Bookstores are bulging with memoirs, Friedman, one of the poet’s most emi- the Macphersons had legally adopted in sends him J’Accuse, the World Alliance but there are very few lesbian stories and nent critics, now adds 307 letters by H. 1928, Bryher keeps H. D. abreast of the for Combating Antisemitism pamphlet even fewer written by activists who made D. and her circle from 1932 to 1937. To doings at their ménage, with its madden- exposing Nazi atrocities, and funds in contributions to the lesbian and gay move- the meditative intensity and polished ing housekeeper “Dragon,” its garden in case the Freuds should be forced to ments. Here, then, is the personal story of craft of Tribute to Freud these letters add the making, its constant flow of books leave Vienna. In a development that a woman who played a major role in that the cross-cutting immediacy, vivacity and letters, and the newsworthy barks, leads the bemused H. D. to liken her- history and whose earlier writings were and detail of daily life caught on the nips and tail-wagging of its human and self to the Virgin of the Annunciation, groundbreaking in lesbian studies. For this wing in an era when international phone animal denizens. Besides Freud, other Freud fixes on the idea of giving first reason as well as for the good read it calls were an extravagance reserved for correspondents include Havelock Ellis, one, then both, of Yo-fi’s puppies to offers, I am again grateful for Lillian emergencies. Expertly framed by Conrad Aiken and Bryher’s first hus- Perdita—to Bryher’s dismay, who can- Faderman’s words. I Friedman’s biographical narrative, com- band, Robert McAlmon. not accept the responsibility and wants mentary and apparatus, this rich trove even less to hurt Freud’s feelings. forms an illuminating supplement to H. ust as the title Analyzing Freud gives H. D., for her part, rides high on the Faderman at about five years D.’s poems and autobiographical writ- little hint of the volume’s wide- glory of being a “pupil” of Freud old. From Naked in the Promised Land. ings as well as an important resource for J angle biographical lens, H. D.’s let- (“She’ll live on that for the rest of her scholars of psychoanalysis, international ters present not an analysis of Freud life,” sniffs Kenneth). Hoping to bur- modernism and the history and theory but a composite portrait of doctor and nish her image and revive her flagging of sexuality. Historians will find much patient (or “pupil,” the category H. D. career, she urges Bryher to “broadcast” of interest, too. While the letters don’t much preferred)—a stylized, idiosyn- her new status to “London.” Vanity offer a conventional “good read,” gen- cratically detailed picture created over aside, the analysis appears to have been eral readers of biography and letters time by a poet of formidable observa- intensely productive. In the first hour H. who are interested in this moment and tional and literary powers. H. D.’s Freud D. sobbed and sobbed, “terrified of this milieu and who enjoy the challenge of bears little resemblance to the popular old Oedipus Rex” who accused her of following other people’s lives through image of the analyst as silent, feature- being disappointed in him, made her correspondence will find it repays the less recipient of the patient’s projec- stand beside him to see who was taller effort, especially if they read it alongside tions. With his family, servants and pets (she was, though she’d hoped he would Tribute to Freud. circulating at 19 Berggasse, his price- seem “a giant” so that she could feel The central voice and extraordinary less collection of antiquities about him, herself a child), and asked her “what am experience the letters track belong, of and his chow Yo-fi—his “Protector,” I,” to which she replied, “‘well, a Jew’— course, to H. D., who seems here both distractingly pregnant that spring—in he seemed to want me to make the smaller and larger than life: narcissistic, regular attendance, Freud was anything statement... the only members of antiq- melodramatic, manipulative, but also but a blank screen. From their first uity that still lived in the world.” They courageous, affectionate and open meeting (after which H. D. moaned to met, Freud told her, “in the same place,” about the often fascinating insights, Bryher, “you said he would not talk and “he in the childhood of humanity— dreams and associations her analysis he talked half the time”), Freud inter- antiquity—I in my own childhood.” produced. H. D.’s intimate friend and acts with his patient in ways he never By the magic of the psychoanalytic benefactor Bryher arranged and paid for codified as rules of clinical practice. transference, through which the her sessions, and most of these letters Freud drily notes that H. D. is the analysand recreates the analyst in the are drawn from their correspondence. only analysand to show more interest image of her fantasies, H. D. trans-

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 17 forms this intimidating “oracle of made possible the richly productive Delphi” into a “mother-bull” filled creative labors of her later years. H. D. with potent love. (This maternal trans- stayed in touch with Freud, sent him ference pains Freud, “so very, very, her work and birthday gifts with Drowning in data very MASCULINE” does he feel; when H. expressions of affection that he recog- D. asks whether it often happens, he nized and reciprocated, and visited him by Julia Epstein replies, “O, very often.”) The analysis after he moved to London in 1938. digs through layers of memory to “the H. D. not only reports on her ana- Publicity’s Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on earliest pre-OE[dipal] stage” of the lytic sessions and her writing but mother/child bond, which she and paints a vivid panorama of her days at Democracy by Jodi Dean. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Freud agree dictates the symbolic land- the Hotel Regina: her walks to Freud’s scape of her writing: “islands, sea, home and office at 19 Berggasse for University Press, 2002, 211 pp., Greek primitives.” They link a land- her five o’clock sessions and the peo- mark dream of gathering roses in an ple and scenes she encountered there; $17.95 paper. enchanted garden to her bisexual grav- visits alone or with friends to cafes, itations. Awed by Freud’s interpretive churches, museums, a shop where she I power, H. D. likens him to the prophet bought photographs of the cross- Joseph, who read the dreams of the dressing actress Elizabeth Bergner for he World Wide Web has made commercial that introduced the first Egyptian kings, and calls him a “dis- the infatuated Bryher; her tramrides those with access wary of surveil- Macintosh computer and the response coverer of new life.” out to the Freuds’ summer house for T lance, loss of privacy, identity to Hillary Clinton’s pronouncement that her last sessions of 1933. With unrest theft, lurking, fraud, scams. The Internet her husband was the victim of a right- roiling Vienna one evening, she acci- houses detailed information about the wing conspiracy. dentally ventured into closed-off individuals who use it and who are part Western democracies are wedded to streets near the Opera and was mildly of its vast databases: social security num- the circulation of information, and interrogated by military police. bers, school and work records, credit access to information in the technocul- Another day, when Nazis had chalked cards and bank records, selling prices of tural era relies upon what Dean calls anti-Semitic slogans on the pave- real estate, birth, death and marriage “communicative capitalism.” “[T]he cir- ments, she arrived for her session records, census numbers and wage and culation of information,” she believes, when all the other patients had can- salary rates. Not only is this information “is also the paradigmatic form of capital- celled, saying she had come because available—in databases, cookies, trace ism.” In a culture based on the view that no one else did. H. D. writes of her codes, computer caches, cybernet- all citizens have a right to know, commit- fears for Freud and his family; Bryher works—it is available anywhere, any time ments to equality and inclusion can battle mentions her aid to Jewish refugees, and at hyperspeed. In the most paranoid distrust and paranoia. instructs H. D. how to escape from fantasies, anyone can call it up. Ideology itself, in Dean’s argument, Vienna in the event of civil war (to Electronic culture has produced a col- has been fundamentally altered under which H. D. replies that since her lective paranoia about circulating infor- the regime of technoculture. heart is “here with this old saint” she mation, in part because access to infor- Communication is the new ideology; it would stay and risk death) and sends mation is titillating. What people seem has survived the most recent crash of animated eyewitness bulletins from most to want to know is secret, classi- Silicon Valley stock options and taken the 1934 International Psycho- fied, embarrassing, dangerous. the place of production. Information Analytical Congress in Lucerne. Americans plump for sunshine laws and besieges technologized societies: com- Soon after the analysis began, Freud ogle the tabloids at checkout counters. puters and cell phones, newspapers and cautioned H. D. not to risk “leaks” by Google browsing reveals the voting television, radio and satellite, chat Sigmund Freud. From Analyzing Freud. writing or talking about it lest “precise- records of politicians, the filmography rooms and blogs. Circulating capital no ly what is most valuable” might slip of actresses, and whether the new guy longer takes the form of widgets or away—advice she heeded with less who moved into the neighborhood has a even money or stock—instead, it has reud and H. D. discuss penis than perfect success, fortunately for website. Media coverage dissects become pure data, disembodied and envy, she somehow deluding this record. Other events too tear the President Bush’s daughters’ underage turned into bandwidth. F herself that she alone is privy to letters’ web. Some were lost, including drinking and Winona Ryder’s Saks spree this theory over which public contro- one from Sachs recommending H. D. and the stain on Monica Lewinsky’s blue hile Dean discusses communi- versy has raged since the 1920s. As she to Freud and those H. D. and Bryher dress. Public fretting about privacy rights cations and information as delves into “the pure homo layer” in sent Freud in Vienna. A hiatus occurs exists alongside an equally public sense W capital, the elephant in her her unconscious, she has a dream when Bryher visits in June 1933. H. D. that secrets are subversive, that citizens argument’s room is economics. Who about a theatre that “seemed to mean and Bryher mute political observations require information and knowledge to holds power in the system of technocul- that these men and all their little to evade the censor, disguising con- sustain their freedom. ture she analyzes? Who has access to the vagaries were only a ‘play,’ a perform- cerns about possible war as worries In Publicity’s Secret, Jodi Dean, a politi- information superhighway—to the glut ance, something to enjoy... not envy, about “Jane” and her health: “No one cal scientist who has also written Aliens of its identity formations and data map- but to keep out of.” On that discovery, here cares about the woman. She was in America: Conspiracy Cultures from pings and market share? And what of the she feels her analysis “absolutely ill, she may be ill again, well—as A Outerspace to Cyberspace, examines the geopolitics of this new communications OVER.” With her writing going well, she says—‘There is always quiet in premise that democracy depends on an ideology? Surely this system does not “hate[s] the ps-a hour, more than I can between.’” Words and lines have been informed citizenry figured as “the pub- operate the same way in the Philippines tell you,” and gripes about Yo-fi’s snor- physically cut from some letters, prob- lic.” She challenges Jürgen Habermas’ as in the United States, in Zambia as in ing on the floor “for nearly the whole ably by Bryher, whom H. D. “trusted to idea that the “public sphere” is an under- Turkey or Norway? time. I thought I was going to get up censor them.” More ellipses arise from pinning of Enlightenment liberal Writing this review at the height of and simply scream.” Distractions aside, the editorial necessity of winnowing democracy by looking at its evil twin: the the Bush administration’s efforts to make Freud prods her to acknowledge a and excerpting these letters from the secret. Pitting publicity and celebrity the world believe in the necessity of “block,” a “link missing,” which she extant correspondence. And private against secrecy and conspiracy, she con- bombing Iraq, it is hard not to apply guesses must be “the ‘father’ vibration, letters are by nature full of holes— cludes that we should jettison the idea of Dean’s theories of publicity and secrecy for we can’t, no matter how we idealize things that go without saying between the public in order to safeguard the to the UN weapons inspection team and the mother-idea, get rid of the father.” the correspondents, which multiply the ideals of democratic governance. (She the 12,000 pages of data that Iraq has After a hiatus fraught with troubles at longer they survive their addressees. never specifies the geopolitical bound- given them. Will it matter what Iraq has home and abroad (perhaps even a sui- Friedman’s deft marshalling of his- aries of her investigation, but her analy- or has not stockpiled? According to cide attempt), H. D. returns to Freud to torical and biographical context guides sis is heavily American.) Dean, “[t]he actual contents of any secret pursue this elusive link and has anoth- us through this riddled terrain, and her Publicity’s Secret uses a broad brush to are…immaterial. The secret is a form er “epic dream” about driving a horse prodigious labor of scholarship and dissect conspiracy theory, celebrity and that can be filled in by all sorts of con- that splits into two horses going oppo- critical judgment shines from every the media industry. Dean examines phe- tents and fantasies—economic secrets, site (sexual) directions, which she hero- page. New Directions is to be com- nomena from Freemasonry to tabloid military secrets, sexual secrets, secrets to ically unifies to arrive at a sublime mended for publishing it, but it must journalism, from Internet pornography power, wealth, and immortality…. what rebirth in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania— also be said that the project deserved to financial markets, from the work of is at stake is not content but connection, her native town. more meticulous support from mod- Habermas and Jeremy Bentham to that the relationship within and between com- Once her analytic sessions end, H. ernism’s vanguard press. If there is of Slovenian cultural theorist Slavoj munities held together and apart within a D., with Freud’s ambiguous sanction, occasion to reprint, it will surely wish i ek. She begins with the abstract matrix of secrecy and publicity.” considers herself to have earned to correct a raft of errors, from proper premises that “[p]ublicity…is the ideolo- Even supposing it is possible to enough of a “cat-collar” to give “infor- names, contradictory death dates, mis- gy of technoculture” and that “publicity decode and to trust Iraq’s weapons infor- mal hours” to friends and acquaintanc- takes in English translations of Freud’s is to technoculture what liberalism is to mation, the political and communicative es, with results that spin out of control letters, idiom and homonym errors and capitalism…. the ideology that consti- game goes beyond what chemicals or and send her back to analysis, now with misspellings, for this contribution to tutes the truth conditions of global, which weapons-grade metals are where. Walter Schmideberg. But Freud helped the documentary record of modernism information-age capital.” To ground this George W. Bush is indignant for the sake free her creative force by pronouncing and psychoanalysis will be consulted heady stuff, she analyses some disparate of indignation. Where’s the plutonium? and her “a POET” and in Friedman’s view and cited for decades to come. I media events, such as the Apple “1984” homeland security are catch-phrases that

18 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 identify shell games whose hidden gold- anonymously submitted original composi- en rings turn out to be made of hollow tions to “the box” from which pieces were plastic. The first will justify strafing the selected for feedback; their work was reg- land and people of Iraq, while the sec- Long before Oprah ularly featured in the “Ladies’ ond threatens the civil liberties of people Department” of the most famous of anti- living in or visiting the United States. by Gabrielle Foreman slavery publications, The Liberator. Turn-of-the-century clubwomen nformation has produced a paradox: Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African sought to communicate to ever-wider audi- people want to know everything ences the ways in which literary work could I about everyone else, to be famous American Literary Societies by Elizabeth McHenry. Durham, combat “the assault and battery constantly and celebrated, while at the same time committed upon [Black] hearts” and sensi- wanting no one to know anything about NC: Duke University Press, 2002, 423 pp., $18.95 paper. bilities. Literary activities were central to them. Secrets are simultaneously guarded fulfilling clubwomen’s material and politi- and coveted; secrets are the postmodern I cal aims. Through their national confer- objects of desire. The 24/7 information ences and networks they became avid read- glut that reigns in the West configures athryn Johnson, an unknown Forgotten Readers’ postbellum chapters ers and promoters of each others’ work: the public as anxious to know every- Black entrepreneur, spent several introduce us to two societies that contin- Pauline Hopkins presented Contending thing—from the latest diet craze to what K years in the 1920s selling books by ued that struggle: DC’s Bethel Literary, as Forces to one club and offered to give read- Saddam Hussein keeps in his palaces— and about African Americans from the it was commonly called, and the Boston ings across the country; Victoria Earle but no one can ever know enough (enough back seat of her new Ford coupe. She Literary and Historical Association. Mathews, who wrote the “manifesto of for what?), because there will always be covered ten states and twenty-five thou- These organizations held public lectures the movement itself,” recommended more information, more opinions, more sand miles, stopping at prayer meetings and intellectual forums regularly attended Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy as she data. There are not enough channels and and Sunday services to distribute over five by hundreds of people at a time when addressed clubwomen who gathered too many channels. thousand books that “all the colored peo- racial violence and the influence of together to form a national movement. Dean takes apart and challenges the ple ought to read.” This was not princi- Booker T. Washington’s ideas of industri- Forgotten Readers definitively establishes idea that democracy relies upon publici- pally about money, she averred: “I am al education were each at their height. the centrality of Black literacy as a shared ty, secrecy and a public sphere. She first of all creating a desire for reading... I Though “race issues” that directly affect- and collective act. McHenry underscores believes that the idea of the public has knew the books that would help the ed their members were most often their how early writers expected that those who been co-opted by “communicative capi- Negro to understand his honorable place focus, animated discussions were prompt- were literate would read to others. In doing talism.” She concludes, controversially, in the United States [so I became] an itin- ed by papers like “Is the Attitude of the so they marshaled their limited but rich that the notion of the public needs to be erant bookseller.” Johnson believed that Christian Nations toward the Chinese resources, both personal and literary, to abandoned because “the public” does “the value of books” lay in their “ability Justifiable?” and by “Miss Huidobro’s “combat charges of racial inferiority, vali- not really exist, and efforts to invent it to communicate race pride and con- remarks on ‘Cuba and the Cubans.’” date their call for social justice, and alert and put its ideology into place threaten sciousness”; therein lay “the hope of McHenry has uncovered details that give their audience to the disparity between democracy. And she issues a call to arms: progress and group advancement.” a much deeper sense of a public sphere American ideals and racial inequality.” “Not everyone knows. Not every opin- Elizabeth McHenry tells this story as an that thrived from the 1890s, often called Black writing became a public act, and ion matters. What does matter is com- example of the larger narrative she unfolds the nadir of Black American experience, its documents public documents. Critic mitment and engagement by people and in Forgotten Readers, a magisterial work that through the lowest point of twentieth- Barbara Christian once made a similar point organizations networked around contest- broadens the conventional understandings century representation, marked by the about the humble beginnings of literary ed issues.” of African Americans’ “desire for read- release of The Birth of a Nation in 1915. superstars and . Along the way, Dean presents some ing.” Augmenting the image of individual Women talked about them after church and provocative hypotheses. For example, slaves “stealing book learning” and recent- cHenry is attentive to issues of during the long waits to get their hair done, she uses Lévi-Strauss’ notion of a “zero ly freed masses under the tutelage of New gender, outlining, for example, passing dog-eared copies of Sula and institution” to describe the Web. In this England school teachers, she examines the M how women were central to the Meridian from reader to reader. Because, like reading, the Web is an “empty signifi- literary societies, newspapers and activities leadership of the postbellum organiza- early materials, these books were not pro- er.” Lacking intrinsic meaning, it mere- of Black Americans from around 1830, tions. She has uncovered marvelous sto- duced or consumed in conventional ways, ly signifies the presence of meaning, the height of the anti-slavery movement, ries about the “mental feasts” enjoyed by they at first didn’t register on the radar pointing to it without containing it. The to the Harlem Renaissance, some one hun- antebellum women’s literary societies, screen of scholars or booksellers. Web is a public relations tool, a dump- dred years later. whose members were “full of the greed ing ground for free-floating data. It McHenry resurrects a history of Black for literature and letters.” These clubs, he collaborative strategies and deliberately offers too many options, letters often unvalued by those who pre- which may have been more numerous independent institutions that and much of what it sends to comput- serve literary contributions and materials. than men’s groups, often met in small T characterize early Black literary er screens is drivel and dreck. In large Woefully underserved by academic insti- groups in women’s homes. Creating societies help explain the success of writ- part, it signals meaning by encoding tutions in the South and North, African spaces in which they straddled “womanly” ers like Terry McMillan and the contem- exchange and reciprocity and interactiv- Americans have encountered countless and political spheres, they expanded porary book club rage, McHenry argues ity. It is pure infrastructure. stop signs on the standard road to litera- notions of literacy to include oral and crit- in her epilogue. Marketing her books in But the Web cannot emancipate peo- cy. McHenry recovers the institutions ical skills and used these safer havens to church halls, community centers, Black ple. Its core value is anarchy rather than Blacks have created and relied on to sup- develop public voices. The Boston Afric- bookstores and sororities, McMillan law. The Web’s anarchy is about prolifer- plement and sustain their literary educa- American Society included both the high- recreated “a paradigm of how to sell to ation: the reproduction of images, tion. Her impressive archival work sup- ly literate Maria Stewart, the first Black readers.” Paralleling this break- screens, clicks, links, streaming audio and ports her claim that to understand Black American woman to give public political through cross-over success was the rise of video. It celebrates pluralism and frag- readers we must expand our notions of lectures, and Elizabeth Riley, their presi- Black (women’s) book clubs whose pub- mentation. Information, not knowledge, both literature and literacy. dent, who used her mark to sign legal doc- lic, integrated face appeared as Oprah’s is power; mindshare equals market share. Forgotten Readers is that rare breed of uments. Members of a Philadelphia group Book Club. Acknowledging the vast Publicity’s Secret makes some persuasive book that both opens new avenues of arguments. Unfortunately, its prose is scholarship and that your mother—if densely dependent on academic jargon she’s like mine—will want to devour and Tenure Track Faculty Position in Women’s Studies and on the invention of verbs taken then discuss with her mother and friends. 2003-2004 Academic Year from computing: when Hillary Clinton Its first chapters are the ones I really rel- “clicks on” a right-wing conspiracy ished. McHenry examines antebellum lit- University of Massachusetts/Amherst against her husband, media responses try erary societies which, she argues, enabled WXYZWXYZWXYZWXYZWXYZWXYZ “to reboot the political system,” and the evolution of a Black public sphere and “democratic politics has been formatted political consciousness. She dislodges con- Opening for Assistant Professor for scholar with expertise in African American through a dynamic of concealment and ventional assumptions that overemphasize women, Ph.D. and some teaching experience in Women’s Studies required. Relevant disclosure.” Dean also makes frequent, the role of the antebellum press as aboli- fields include: American Studies, cultural or critical legal studies, feminist theory or passing references to current events but tionist organs meant to sway white audi- women and health. Preference to candidates whose work crosses traditional aca- uses concrete examples sparsely. One ences. Free Blacks were equally concerned might even say that she chooses the with rights that were disintegrating, not demic boundaries. Duties include: one required course and one elective course each secret rhetoric of the academy (at one improving, in the nineteenth century. semester, including large general education introductory course; advising; depart- point she refers to “habermasochism”) Early newspapers encouraged literacy and mental and university-wide service. UMass/Amherst is a member of the Five College over the democratic language of the became partners, McHenry shows, in the Consortium, along with Amherst, Smith, Hampshire and Mt. Holyoke Colleges. public she does not believe in. That’s too founding and sustaining of literary soci- bad, because she speaks with an intelli- eties and reading-rooms, “reprinting their Send a letter of application, vita, relevant syllabi, sample publications, and three let- gent and important analytic voice about constitutions and applauding their activi- ters of recommendation by February 18, 2003 to: Professor Alexandrina Deschamps, the seductions and dangers of the wired, ties” in their pages. Black Americans saw Chair of Search #18780, Women’s Studies Program, Bartlett 208, University of media-drenched universe. In this uni- this “literary work as a means of instilling Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003. verse, the rule of law has morphed into pride... stressing the importance of racial The University of Massachusetts is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. the rule of artificially manufactured pub- solidarity and self-help” as they struggled Members of minority groups are encouraged to apply. lic opinion, and what is not publicized to convert the stigma of blackness “into a does not exist. I source of dignity and self-affirmation.”

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 19 impact Oprah has made in “spreading nvironmental justice is a common positive images of Black people” and theme among the essays. Pualani exposing millions to Black authors, E Kanaka’ole Kanahele contrasts McHenry argues that in stressing the Polluted by history Native Hawaiian aloha ‘¯aina (love of the emotional responses to the books they’ve land) and other traditional teachings to the read, these encounters “differ in degree by Helen Zia seizure of the sacred island of and kind from the more overt political Kaho’olawe, which was used for bombing confrontations of earlier literary soci- The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World practice by the US military from 1941 eties.” Still, what she tells us about Oprah until the 1980s. Years of protest and the initiatives that resulted in major contribu- edited by Alison H. Deming and Lauret E. Savoy. Minneapolis, deaths of two Hawaiians who attempted tions of books to the infamous Angola to occupy the island finally led to its Prison and in corporate funding of MN: Milkweed Editions, 2002, 210 pp., $18.95 paper. return to the Hawaiian people. Such com- national literacy projects in part revives munities of color are “sacrifice zones” for the expression “the personal is political.” I toxic waste dumps, as Robert Bullard calls Like my best friend’s cooking or a them. For instance, despite strong com- can’t-put-it-down novel, Forgotten Readers hat is the color of nature? Does amaica Kincaid’s opening essay, “In munity opposition, a 200-acre landfill was leaves me both satisfied and wanting the cultural lens of the behold- History,” asks, “What to call the thing approved alongside Alabama’s Selma to more. McHenry calls the participants in W er affect her perception of the J that happened to me and all who look Montgomery Historic Trail, made famous the societies she resurrects “literary natural world? Is one’s own racial context like me?” She challenges any so-called in 1965 for the 54-mile civil rights march. activists.” And she is right. Author Sarah a filter in the observation, description and, objective standard of history, which is Ray Gonzalez describes the trail of haz- Forten also served for three terms on ultimately, the writing and recording of more like “an open wound and each ardous cargo leading to his hometown of Philadelphia’s Female Anti-Slavery Society the “universals” of earth, air, water and breath I take in and expel healing and El Paso, traveled by trucks full of nuclear board of managers. The homes in which the life of all things natural? opening the wound again, over and over, waste from US weapons labs in the north members met hosted planning sessions to The Colors of Nature offers a resounding or is it a long moment that begins anew or industrial waste from US-owned help hide away fugitive slaves or mount “Yes!” to these questions and so marks the each day since 1492?” This reprinted piece maquiladoras in Mexico. campaigns for their release. These women starting point for this challenging collec- sets the tone for The Colors of Nature.The The book ends with the reconnections raised money to pay for the medical care tion of seventeen essays. In a world where book is not so much a query about the made by people who were once dislocated of fugitives and, years later, to combat job context and perspective are often debated, culture of “nature writing,” as the editors from nature. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston discrimination and the convict lease sys- here is a collection that rejoices in the mul- and the title suggest, as a challenge to any revisits the desert site of the US concen- tem. But this sort of material is not fully titude of visions on this topic, as seen “objective” view of the US landscape. tration camp where she was imprisoned in explored. I found the mention of these from the vantages of race and color. Within this narrower scope, the essays 1942 for being Japanese American; there, women’s explicitly political activities fasci- Alison Deming and Lauret Savoy offer work as a bold testimony to the particular she exchanges memories and Paiute leg- nating; I only wish that McHenry had a meandering rationale for the book in experiences of the natural world among ends with a young Native American who drawn in more brilliant colors the multi- their “Introduction as Conversation.” writers who are Native American, is now a haiku poet. In her journey to faceted activism that she traces. They present, to odd effect, a scenario Chicano, Mestizo, Hawaiian, Japanese, make cross-cultural linkages, Sandra A fuller comparative framework would told in the third person: two women walk Lebanese and African American. Jackson-Opoku retraces the African dias- underscore the enormous contributions through the woods, sharing a spiritual Elements of identity and perspective pora to the Caribbean and Europe that made by Forgotten Readers and by the activ- energy, becoming friends. As they discov- other than race and ethnicity are not explic- eventually brought her family to the West ities it illuminates. Like their African er their common bonds, they also become itly explored in this collection—for exam- Side of Chicago. “Bittersweet” is the fla- American counterparts in the 1830s to aware of their differences: ple, gender, class, sexual orientation. While vor of a melon harvested from the land 1850s, white women too gathered in each that conversation would have added anoth- that David Mas Matsumoto reclaimed a others’ homes as part of a nexus of abo- One woman is of -American er dimension, its absence isn’t jarring generation after his family was forced off litionist and reform groups. They tended heritage, her family story entwined because the writers are so respectful of its tenant farm and interned during World to take a class- and race-based missionary since the 1600s with the story of nature’s creatures, human or otherwise, ani- War Two. tone, meaning to suppress vice and mainstream American culture. mate or inanimate. Is this characteristic of The rich variety in this collection defies immorality through their beneficence. In While her ancestors fled religious how writers of color approach nature? The thematic categories. Savoy and Deming contrast, Black women’s groups, as oppression in England to restart writers don’t attempt to examine or general- describe The Colors of Nature not as a McHenry shows, addressed their own their lives in the New World, their ize; instead, the essays speak for themselves. “melting pot,” not even as a “salad,” but experiences and ministered to intra-group sense of culture was narrowed by Enrique Salmon, Melissa Nelson and as “a mixture of ingredients that remain moral, material and intellectual needs. the constraints of their upbringing. challenge the master narrative separate but nevertheless combine to Understandably, McHenry steers clear of They brought the propensity to of America that romanticizes a virginal make a delicious and nourishing whole.” material that threatens to pull her study of oppress with them....The other land, a continent free for the taking. “There Savor this celebration of nature by literary communities into the orbit of woman is of African American, has been very little of the North American Francisco X. Alarcón, presented in anti-slavery studies or the field of (white) Euro-American and Native continent that was ever untouched by Spanish and English: women and reading in the nineteenth cen- American heritage, her family story humans,” writes Salmon of his Rarámuri tury. What a comparative analysis would riddled with silences generated by ancestors of the Sierra Madres; “the land IN XOCHITL IN CUICATL make clearer, though, is that for white loss, displacement, and disposses- has been managed just like a garden.” women, social, reform and literary activi- sion. The descendant of slaves and Melissa Nelson says that many conserva- cada árbol every tree ties didn’t converge until a full thirty years freemen, indigenous inhabitants tionists believe the stereotype of “lazy, dirty un hermano a brother after the emergence of the societies that and colonizers, she faces the ambi- Indian[s]” who are “anti-environmental cada monte every hill she outlines. But McHenry’s ground- guities of a mixedblood regarding because they want to ‘use’ the ‘untouched’ una pirámide a pyramid breaking research will make possible both her chosen, inherited, and imposed wildlands.” Louis Owens describes his un oratorio a holy spot comparative work and fuller explorations identities and a connection to place assignment to burn a remote mountain of the links between literary activities and as home. Seeing the world through shelter when he was a seasonal ranger for cada valle every valley other forms of activism. the lens of one another’s cultural the US Forest Service, only to learn too late un poema a poem Before Borders put it out of business, difference is less familiar terrain. that it had been built by Native Americans. in xochitl in xochitl I bought a small sign at my favorite Los (pp. 4-5) “Gradually, almost painfully,” he writes, “I in cuicatl in cuicatl Angeles women’s bookstore: “To read is began to understand that what I called flor y canto flower and song to empower. To empower is to write. To So begins the editors’ journey to eluci- ‘wilderness’ was an absurdity, nothing more write is to influence. To influence is to date their belief that nature writing has a than a figment of the European imagina- cada nube every cloud change.” I looked for it as I wrote this context. They struggle to find a common tion…. I had succumbed to a five-hundred- una plegaria a prayer review, and propped it up alongside an language and space for the broad man- year-old pattern of deadly thinking that cada gota every rain etching of a group of Black men reading date they set for their book. Deming, who separates us from the natural world.” de lluvia drop together, one of whom reminds me of is Euro-American, a nature writer and Humans can learn much from owls, un milagro a miracle “Pop,” my grandfather. These pieces poet, asks, “How does one work more turkeys, moose and other creatures, as share space with a Romare Beardon print, consciously toward understanding the shows through traditional cada cuerpo every body the profile of a beautiful woman sitting true power of human culture, moving an Abenaki, Mohawk, Mohican and Iroquois una orilla a seashore respectably straight reading to a younger individual ethic of the ‘the practice of the tales. To his Abenaki ancestors, the turtle al mar a memory version of herself by lamplight. Forgotten wild’ toward a more just cultural empow- was powerful and sacred. On every turtle’s un olvido at once lost Readers gives these words and images erment?” It’s a good question, and one back is a lunar calendar, holding the moon encontrado and found deeper meaning and fuller dimension, that the book doesn’t address. Savoy, a and the earth: thirteen large plates and twen- illuminating its sources without ever los- geologist of Afro-, Euro- and Native ty-eight smaller ones represent the thirteen todos juntos: we all together: ing its readers in a labyrinth of details or American descent, sharpens the focus to full moons of each year and the twenty- luciérnagas fireflies dates. McHenry brings African American “What is the American Earth to people of eight days between the full moons. Bruchac de la noche in the night literary studies into an exciting conversa- color?” After soliciting work from segues from myth and descriptions of newly soñando dreaming up tion about the inter-relation between “approximately a hundred prominent hatched snapping turtles and the seven dis- el cosmos the cosmos writing, reading, authorship and publish- writers, thinkers and policymakers,” the tinctive flavors of turtle meat to jarring (pp. 44-45) ing. Forgotten Readers is a signal contribu- editors selected pieces they believed were present-day cancers that now afflict the ani- tion to nineteenth-century literary histo- “provocative and nourishing.” And mals, a result of poisonous industrial wastes What is the color of nature? As this book ry, as enjoyable as it is important. I indeed they are. spewed into the St. Lawrence River. affirms, it is every color under the sun. I

20 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 tion tended to blur the already porous boundaries between transsexuality, homosexuality and gender nonconformi- Free to be she ty in the quotidian practices of queer lives and subcultures. by Paisley Currah The 1970s’ “liberal moment” initially seemed to hold great promise for How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United reforms that would redefine sex in order to introduce transsexual men and States by Joanne Meyerowitz. Cambridge, MA: Harvard women into the binary legal sex classifi- cation system that their very existence University Press, 2002, 363 pp., $29.95 hardcover. threatened. By the 1980s, however, those reforms lost support when the gay rights I movement distanced itself from gender transgressors and when feminist cri- he story of Christine Jorgensen’s feminists, the public and the media tiques of both male and female transsex- sex change broke on December limned the always contested boundaries uality as manifestations of misogyny T 1, 1952 with the New York Daily between sex, gender and sexuality. undermined the medical establishment’s News’ banner front page headline, “Ex- In addition to examining these defini- support for the few gender identity clin- GI Becomes Blond Beauty.” Transsexual tional battles, Meyerowitz details how ics where sexual reassignment surgeries Christine Jorgensen revived her career in men and women across the United States transsexuality became a lens through were performed. 1967 with the publication of her autobi- felt, writes Joanne Meyerowitz, a “shock which post-war American culture’s con- ography. From How Sex Changed. of recognition.” The mass-market pub- cerns with “the limits of individualism, hile her history ends before licity about Jorgensen gave transsexual the promises and pitfalls of science, the transgender rights organizing gender people may mark a return to the people a visible rendering of their own appropriate behavior of women and W takes off in the 1990s, many of more expansive notion of gender non- irrepressible cross-gender identifications men, and the boundaries of acceptable the themes Meyerowitz raises reflect conformity that informed the early gay that, until then, had largely been absent. gender expression” were refracted. She some of the tensions animating debates liberation movement, one that identified At that moment fifty years ago uses the story of Jorgensen’s personal about transgender people today. An offi- prevailing gender norms as the root of Jorgensen, who was still in Denmark transformation to frame a riveting social, cial from the American Medical discrimination against LGBT people. In recovering from her surgery, “moved medical and cultural history of transsex- Association pronounced in 1953 that the last few years, all of the major gay irrevocably from private patient to public ualism in the United States. Jorgensen’s “castration did not make him rights organizations in the US have personality.” In the ensuing years she was Following a loose chronological struc- [a woman].” Half a century later these amended their mission statements to characterized variously as “a freak,” “a ture, Meyerowitz begins with pre- narratives recur, not only in popular dis- include transgender people and increas- pervert,” “a hoax,” a “guy,” a “man,” a Jorgensen accounts of sex-change sur- course but in the legal arena. In 1999 in ingly are devoting significant resources to “he-she girl,” a “natural woman,” a “nice gery in the US before moving to a cul- Littleton v. Prange, a judge on Texas’ high- advocating for the rights of those whose lady,” the Scandinavian Societies of tural history of representations of est court ruled that a marriage between a gender identity or gender expression Greater New York’s “Woman of the Jorgensen and other early transsexual transsexual woman and a non-transsexu- does not conform to social expectations Year,” “a pioneer with a message,” groundbreakers. She parallels the devel- al man was in fact a same-sex marriage for their birth sex. “courageous,” a “supermiddle-class con- opment in scientific literature of notions and therefore invalid: “can a physician The richness of Meyerowitz’ incisive servative,” and, by transgender activists in of gender as distinct from sex with the change the gender of a person with a and accessible history lies in the breadth the 1990s, as “our Christine.” “fierce and demanding drive” of trans- scalpel, drugs and counseling, or is a per- and depth of her research. Her sources There had been media accounts of sexual people to define themselves son’s gender immutably fixed by our include medical journals, newspaper and other “sex changes” in the US and through and against the power of med- Creator at birth?…There are some things magazine accounts, autobiographical Europe—interestingly more about ical gatekeepers. In chapters covering the we cannot will into being. They just are. material and letters from transsexual men female-to-male (FTM) transsexuals— 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, she situates trans- We hold, as a matter of law, that Christie and women found in Jorgensen’s going back to the 1930s. But the mas- sexualism in relation to the gay and sex- Lee Littleton is a male.” archives, and the files of the relatively sive, cacophonous exposure of ual liberation movements, documenting While some of the trans-phobic few medical practitioners who advocated Jorgensen’s story turned her into a the effects of these movements’ shifting tropes—nature, science and God— for transsexual people before the 1990s. palimpsest on which factions of the notions of gender on transgender peo- remain the same, the attitude of 21st- Her success in constructing a complex medical establishment, transsexuals, ple. She describes how the sexual revolu- century gay rights groups toward trans- narrative from these disparate discourses

After Astounding Evil, the Promise of More to Come That Which Flows

Sister Delores says she believes that good will triumph. That which flows I believe only in the necessities of evolution; hence from eye to window this may be the beginning of the end. from tree to sky from bird to bird But why must it be so personal? from hand to pen Could we not live coolly in an ice age from ink to paper unaware that the glaciers will soon split from paper to earth and part and heave us to the sea? from earth to tree What about a meteor? Something sudden and huge from tree to window and instantly obliterating? from window to eye Not this unabating terror that we inhabit, from eye to cloud our jaws clenched, our necks twisted and stiff from cloud to cloud from turning to see behind our backs, night and day. from cloud to cloud from cloud to leaf Perhaps we will evolve, if there is time (which it seems there is not), from green to red into a many-eyed, many-eared creature, from green to yellow exquisitely sensed to danger, yet endowed with a great courage, from yellow to red the kind we know now only through denial. from blue to blue from sky to lake Or perhaps we will devolve, each of us, back to our infancies from lake to sky when our imaginations were small, our fears simple and few: will not be stilled Hunger. Cold. Wet. will not be slowed That she will not be there when we need her. will not be quickened Her largeness, that powerful presence will not be hastened so able to leave at any moment, will not be kept waiting our fingers so tiny, so weak, so completely unable to hold on. even though the Messiah come

— Marcia Falk

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 21 stems in no small part from the way she sexed condition” was a way to justify elucidates the relationship between trans- medical treatment—hormone therapy sexual people, medical practitioners and and surgery—for transsexual people, The Bookshelf the media without succumbing to the though the construction of transsexuali- temptation of a simplistic linear account. ty as a biological, not psychological, phe- Each month we list the recently published books received during the preceding month She documents with great care how nomenon did not ultimately prevail in or so which we think readers of the Women’s Review will want to know about. This is, “transgendered subjects used available American medicine. By 1949, although however, a very partial selection of the books by and about women published each cultural forms to construct, describe and the etiology of transsexualism was still month. Our listing is informational, not evaluative; the only annotation added is a brief reconfigure their own identities.” debated, as it is to this day, at least those indication of the subject-matter, where the title is not self-explanatory. All are non-fic- By citing the letters and statements of “lost between the sexes” had a name, one tion titles published in 2002, unless otherwise noted. transsexuals throughout the book, that has essentially stuck. Meyerowitz Meyerowitz treats transsexual men and identifies Dr. David Caudwell, a psychia- M. Jacqui Alexander, Lisa Albrecht, Sharon Day and Mab Segrest, eds., Sing, Whisper, Shout, women as historical subjects, as produc- trist, as the first doctor to use the term Pray! Feminist Visions for a Just World. Duluth, MN: EdgeWork. ers of their own self-knowledge. She jux- “transsexual” to name those he called Barbara K. Altmann and Deborah L. McGrady, Christine de Pizan: A Casebook. New York: taposes doctors’ descriptions of their “individuals who are physically one sex Routledge, 2003. (Fifteen scholars contribute essays on the works of the writer, shedding transsexual patients as “unreliable histo- and apparently psychologically of the light on the historical, feminist and literary contexts.) Sally Armstrong, Veiled Threat: The Hidden Power of the Women of Afghanistan. New York: Four rians,” “awful liars,” “queers,” “nuts” opposite sex.” Walls Eight Windows. and “unappreciative and ungrateful” The debate between biological and Adele Azar-Rucquoi, Money as Sacrament: Finding the Sacred in Money. Berkeley, CA: Celestial with transsexuals’ descriptions of their psychological theories soon transformed Arts. (How money influences women’s relationships, independence and inner peace.) doctors as “rough,” “condescending and into disagreements over treatment. In Nancy Azara, Spirit Taking Form: Making a Spiritual Practice of Making Art. Boston: Red rude,” treating their patients as “labora- general, those who favored medical inter- Wheel. tory animals,” ridiculing them and twist- vention were often European, more like- Julie Bettie, Women Without Class: Girls, Race, and Identity. Los Angeles: University of ing their patients’ words to suit their ly to be endocrinologists or surgeons and California Press, 2003. (An examination of Mexican American and white teenage girls purposes. In putting these accounts side more likely to subscribe, at least initially, and class theory, focusing especially on color, ethnicity, gender and sexuality.) by side, Meyerowitz gives no more cre- to biological explanations. Stateside doc- Lisa M. Bitel, Women in Early Medieval Europe, 400-1100. New York: Cambridge dence, and perhaps ultimately less, to the tors, especially psychiatrists and psychol- University Press. ever-changing expert accounts of trans- ogists, tended to view surgery as “uncrit- Anne Bolin and Jane Granskog, eds., Athletic Intruders: Ethnographic Research on Women, Culture, and Exercise. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003. sexuality than to the voices of transsex- ical compliance with the patient’s mental Laura Briggs, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico. Los ual people themselves. illness.” They preferred to instruct their Angeles: University of California Press. “willfully annoying” transsexual patients Vern L. Bullough, Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context. New ecause Jorgensen was such a will- to undergo analysis and counseling, York: Harrington Park Press. ing subject for media attention, despite the documented failure by the Zofia Burr, Of Women, Poetry and Power: Strategies of Address in Dickinson, Miles, Brooks, Lorde B because she saw herself as a mid-1960s of psychoanalysis or other and Angelou. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. spokeswoman for closeted transsexu- forms of psychotherapy to change the Kathleen A. Ryan Carlsson, The Case Against Women Raising Children. Sayville, NY: als—she refused, as she put it, “to put gender identity of a single transsexual. Groenendael. (An argument for equality in parenting.) my tail between my legs and hide”—and The organization of transsexual peo- Adriana Cavarero, Stately Bodies: Literature, Philosophy, and the Question of Gender. Ann Arbor, because she had a flair for the kind of ple as a group with its own interests and MI: University of Michigan Press. (On the use of bodily metaphors and terminology in media labor that was thrust upon her by agendas was expressed via a cagey resist- reference to politics.) Veronica Chambers, Having it All? Black Women and Success. New York: Doubleday, 2003. (An the 1952 exposé, she remained in the ance to the gender-enforcing role of the exploration of stereotypes that strives to show what success really means for black public eye for the rest of her life. medical establishment. Transsexuals women today.) Countless newspaper articles about her often read medical journals to learn Brenda Cossman and Judy Fudge, eds., Privatization, Law, and the Challenge to Feminism. from 1952 until her death in 1989 were what to say to be deemed eligible for Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. (Eight case studies addressing the issue of supplemented by a five-part autobio- surgery; Meyerowitz notes that even privatization in various arenas.) graphical series in American Weekly in doctors eventually became distrustful of Jeanne Halladay Coughlin and Andrew R. Thomas, The Rise of Women Entrepreneurs: People, 1953, an autobiography in 1967 and a the uniformity of the histories their Processes, and Global Trends. Westport, CT: Quorum Books. film version of the autobiography in patients presented to them. There was a Rose Marie Curteman, My Renaissance: A Widow’s Healing Pilgrimage to Tuscany. Herndon, VA: 1970. Jorgensen even had her own suspicious absence of patients who Capital Books. nightclub act. Incessant public scruti- acknowledged they would be homosex- Lucinda Damon-Bach and Victoria Clements, eds., Catherine Maria Sedgwick: Critical ny—including invasive reports on every ual or gender transgressors after their Perspectives. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003. (An examination of one of the nation’s first woman writers’ works.) visible feature of her body and the way transition. Paradoxically, the ascendancy Michael Dobson and Nicola J. Watson, England’s Elizabeth: An Afterlife in Fame and Fantasy. she presented her gender (“a slight of the very psychiatric narratives that New York: Oxford University Press. (An examination of the portrayals of Elizabeth I in down on her upper lip, but no sign that initially excluded surgery and hormone written works since the 17th century.) she had ever used a razor,” “her gestures therapy eventually led to the belief that Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, edited and translated by Joan DeJean, Against Marriage: The with a cigaret with gracefully feminine” psychological sex and later gender iden- Correspondence of La Grande Mademoiselle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [sic], the “small size” of her breasts)— tity were more intransigent than biology. Eleanor Abdella Doumato and Marsha Pripstein Posusney, eds., Women and Globalization in became a catalyst for serious public As Meyerowitz writes, “the mind—the the Arab : Gender, Economy and Society. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner explorations of the questions of sex and sense of self—was less malleable than Publishers, 2003. gender definition. the body.” Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, eds., Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Of course, pre-Jorgensen medical As the first book-length social and Workers in the New Economy. New York: Metropolitan. researchers had long been involved in the intellectual history of transsexuality in Karen L. Fingerman, Mothers and Their Adult Daughters: Mixed Emotions, Enduring Bonds. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003. project of creating and endlessly revising the United States, How Sex Changed mines Barbara Miller Fishman, Emotional Healing through Mindfulness Meditation: Stories and Meditations culturally legible taxonomies of non-nor- a wealth of primary sources and builds for Women Seeking Wholeness. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions. mative forms of sex, gender and sexuali- constructively on the work of other Donna Gabaccia and Franca Iacovetta, eds., Women, Gender, and Transnational Lives: Italian ty. When the nineteenth-century sexolo- scholars in the emerging field of trans- Workers of the World. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. gists’ notion of “gender inversion” was gender studies. By framing her history Michelle Gibson and Deborah T. Meem, eds., Femme/Butch: New Considerations of the Way We replaced in the twentieth century with with repeated reference to one very pub- Want to Go. New York: Harrington Park. narrower definitions of homosexuality as lic figure—Jorgensen, who transforms Shahla Haeri, No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women. Syracuse, NY: same-sex object choice and of trans- from an event to an icon to the elder Syracuse University Press. vestism as merely cross-dressing, trans- stateswomen of the transgender rights Tova Hartman Halbertal, Appropriately Subversive: Modern Mothers in Traditional Religions. sexuals found themselves, Meyerowitz movement—Meyerowitz weaves the var- points out, in a classification limbo. For ied, at times contradictory, accounts of much of the first half of the century, transsexualism by doctors, by the media many scientists and doctors, including and by transsexual people themselves Alfred Kinsey, continued to describe into a fascinating history of gender in the people whose psychological sense of twentieth century. Certainly one person’s themselves as men or women did not life story cannot represent the diversity Chair, Department of Sculpture The Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Sculpture and Extended Media is looking for a correspond to the cultural norms of gender identities, gender expressions, dynamic and energetic chairperson for this nationally acclaimed program.This is a tenure-track faculty position attached to their birth sex as “suffering politics and bodies. But it is also true that for an associate or full professor, to begin July 1, 2003.The candidate must possess a vision for the department, be an equitable administrator, be respected by the broader art community and have the interpersonal skills to nur- from homosexual tendencies.” no one person publicly embodied the ture the sense of trust and community that now exists within this program. A significant national or international professional career along with an MFA or equivalent is required. Five years full-time teaching At the same time, a theory of a uni- phenomenon of transsexuality in the US experience plus administrative experience preferred. versal human circulated more than Christine Jorgensen. Candidate may be a sculptor or in an allied field (critic, curator, etc.). The candidate should be conversant in contemporary issues, critical theory, and contemporary studio practice. The chair is responsible for day-to-day among many transsexuals and was popu- Meyerowitz’ examination of the shifting administrative, academic and managerial decisions and must maintain, in concert with the faculty, the lar among European sexologists. As portraits created by doctors, the media, departmental image and national reputation. The Sculpture Department presently has 6 full-time faculty, numerous adjunct faculty, 120 undergraduate majors, 12 graduate students, and administers a significant Jorgensen consistently repeated in inter- transgender people and Jorgensen herself visiting artists program. The graduate program is ranked 5th nationally by U.S. News & World Report. views, “Each person is actually both shows how the person who was the very Salary is nationally competitive based on experience and qualifications. Include a detailed letter summarizing qualifications; CV; examples of recent work and/or video, CD or DVD documentation; published writing or [man and woman] in varying degrees…I archetype of transsexuality helped launch catalogues; names, addresses and phone numbers of three references; and SASE to: Chair, Search Committee, am more of a woman than I am a man.” a revolution that undermines social cer- Sculpture Department, Virginia Commonwealth University, PO Box 843005, 1000 W. Broad St., Richmond, VA 23284-3005. Review of applications will begin February 1, 2003 and continue until position is Identifying transsexuality as a type of tainties about the meaning and filled. www.vcu.edu/artweb/Sculpture biological anomaly in which some people immutability of sex and gender as static, Virginia Commonwealth University is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. Women, minorities and persons with disabilities are encouraged to apply. experienced an “unusually high mixed- binary categories. I

22 The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (An examination of Catholics in the US and Orthodox Jews in Israel, discussing how to raise daughters in religions that limit their freedoms.) Classified Lynn Haley-Banez and Joanne Garrett, Lesbians in Committed Relationships: Extraordinary Couples, Ordinary Lives. New York: Alice Street Editions. Ruth L. Hall and Carole A. Oglesby, eds., Exercise and Sport in Feminist Therapy: Constructing Booksellers about its offerings, which include an MA, Modalities and Assessing Outcomes. New York: Haworth. Lois Kathryn Herr, Women, Power, and AT&T: Winning Rights in the Workplace. Boston: MA/JD, major concentration, and graduate and Northeastern University Press, 2003. undergraduate certificates. Applicants should Georgina Hickey, Hope and Danger in the New South City: Working-Class Women and Urban send a letter of interest outlining their qualifica- Development in Atlanta, 1890-1940. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2003. tions for the position, a CV (which includes a Etty Hillesum, Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943. Grand Rapids, MI: list of graduate courses taken and courses William B. Eerdmans. (Collected writings of a Dutch Holocaust victim.) taught), sample syllabi, and three letters of rec- Stephanie Hodgson-Wright, ed., Women’s Writing of the Early Modern Period, 1588-1688: An ommendation to: Friends of Women’s Studies Anthology. New York: Press. Visiting Professor Search Committee, Center , Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem. New York: Atria, 2003. (An analysis of for Women’s Studies, University of Cincinnati, the effects of low self-esteem on African Americans.) P.O. Box 210164, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0164. Sharon Hoover, ed., Willa Cather Remembered. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. (A Publications Applications are due March 1, 2003. The collection of memories of the author by friends and acquaintances.) Jane H. Hunter, How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood. University of Cincinnati is an Affirmative New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Solving the Great Pronoun Problem: 14 Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Women Aída Hurtado, Voicing Chicana Feminisms: Young Women Speak Out on Sexuality and Identity. New Ways to Avoid the Sexist Singular contains and minorities are highly encouraged to apply. York: New York University Press, 2003. a 14-point guide, discussion, and illustrative Susan Hussey, The Toxic Wave and The Dressing Room: Two Plays. Tampa, FL: University of examples. Equal Writes reviews guidebooks The Gaea Foundation seeks an Associate Tampa Press. about unbiased communication, explains how Director for Programs and Education at its Miranda Joseph, Against the of Community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota to choose one, and supplies a bibliography. To Resource Center for Activism and Arts in Press. (A cautionary look at the idea of community.) order send $5 plus a long, stamped, self- Washington, DC. The Center fosters a creative Ann G. Klein, A Forgotten Voice: A Biography of Leta Stetter Hollingworth. Scottsdale, AZ: Great addressed envelope for each article to the environment for a diverse, international com- Potential. (Biography of an early advocate of gifted education.) author: Marie Shear, 282 East 35 Street, #7N, munity to explore and be active in social change Dean Kramer, Life on Cripple Creek: Essays on Living with Multiple Sclerosis. New York: Brooklyn, NY 11203-3925. and justice work. All educational programs will Demos, 2003. M. Daphne Kutzer, Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code. New York: Routledge, 2003. (An examina- enhance usage of the Center’s extensive alterna- tion of Potter’s children’s stories and their personal and cultural contexts.) Need materials on the contemporary feminist tive public library, an in-depth source of infor- Timothy Larsen, Christabel Pankhurst: Fundamentalism and Feminism in Coalition. Woodbridge, movement? The monthly feminist newspaper mation on alternative histories, viewpoints and Suffolk, UK: Boydell. (Focus on Pankhurst’s work on the suffrage movement prior to off our backs has been reporting on the move- approaches to social change. Salary $35-40,000 World War One, in addition to her later work with Christian evangelism.) ment since 1970. We have published detailed negotiable. For full description and job require- Rebecca Lawton, Reading Water: Lessons from the River. Herndon, VA: Capital Books. (By a coverage of every NWSA conference. Use off ments, email [email protected] or call female whitewater guide on some of America’s greatest rivers.) our backs in your classes. $25 per year. $30 insti- 202-232-0304. Linda L. Layne, Motherhood Lost: A Feminist Account of Pregnancy Loss in America. New York: tutional rate. 2337B 18th St., NW, Washington, Routledge, 2003. DC 20009. Attn.: WRB. (202) 234-8072; Tenured Associate or Full Professor-- Bryan F. Le Beau, The Atheist: Madalyn Murray O’Hair. New York: New York University www.offourbacks.org. Women’s Studies, Syracuse University. The Press, 2003. (Biography of “the most hated woman in America.”) Syracuse University Women’s Studies Program Kristen J. Leslie, When Violence Is No Stranger: Pastoral Counseling with Survivors of Acquaintance Rape. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2003. invites applications and nominations for a Joan Steinau Lester, Fire in My Soul. New York: Atria Books, 2003. (Biography of Job Opportunities tenured associate or full professor, beginning Congresswoman and civil rights activist Eleanor Holmes Norton.) Fall 2003, with expertise in our signature focus Rachel Lev, Shine the Light: Sexual Abuse and Healing in the Jewish Community. Boston: The Center for Women’s Studies at the in Transnational, Cross-Cultural Feminist Northeastern University Press, 2003. University of Cincinnati invites applications Theories. Our long-established program seeks Joan Lombardi, Time to Care: Redesigning Child Care to Promote Education, Support Families, and for a one-year Visiting Assistant Professor posi- strong participation and leadership in research Build Communities. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003. tion in Women’s Studies for the 2003-2004 aca- and teaching at the undergraduate and graduate Nancy Lopez, Hopeful Girls, Troubled Boys: Race and Gender Disparity in Urban Education. New demic year. A Ph.D. in Women’s Studies is levels. Applications should demonstrate a com- York: Routledge, 2003. required, but ABDs who will complete their mitment to Women’s Studies as an interdiscipli- Cynthia Lowenthal, Performing Identities on the Restoration Stage. Carbondale, IL: Southern doctorates by September 2003 will be consid- nary field and to teaching and research about Illinois University Press, 2003. (How identity is portrayed and redefined on the stages of ered. Field of specialization within Women’s the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, sex- Britain in the late seventeenth century.) Cristina Mazzoni, Maternal Impressions: Pregnancy and Childbirth in Literature and Theory. Ithaca, Studies is open, but preference will be given to uality, disability, and class. Competitive salary NY: Cornell University Press. those who have experience in teaching under- and benefits. For additional information about Carole R. McCann and Seung-Kyung Kim, eds., Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global graduate and graduate courses in introductory our program, see http://womens-studies. Perspectives. New York: Routledge, 2003. Women’s Studies, feminist theory and method- syr.edu. We will begin screening applications Yolanda Flores Niemann, et al., eds., Chicana Leadership: The Frontiers Reader. Lincoln, NE: ology, and feminist legal, public policy, or critical February 15, 2003. Send nominations or appli- University of Nebraska Press. race studies. In addition to teaching, the candi- cations, C.V., and letters of recommendation Christine Overall, Aging, Death, and Human Longevity: A Philosophical Inquiry. Berkeley, CA: date is expected to present at least one research to: Women’s Studies Program, Faculty Search, University of California Press, 2003. colloquium and one event sponsored by the UC 208 Bowne Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244-1200. François Poullain de la Barre, Three Cartesian Feminist Treatises. Chicago: University of Friends of Women’s Studies, which provides the Syracuse University is an AA/EOE. Chicago Press. (A 17th-century philosopher concludes that perceived inequality is noth- endowment for this position. Prospective appli- ing more than unfounded prejudice.) cants are invited to visit the Center’s website at Division of Humanities. York University. Margaret Randall, When I Look into the Mirror and See You: Women, Terror, and Resistance. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003. (The story of two women who survived www.uc.edu/ womens_studies to learn more Cultures of the Americas. The Division of torture in Central America during the 1980s.) Maureen Reddy, Traces, Codes, and Clues: Reading Race in Crime Fiction. New Brunswick, NJ: Rurgers University Press, 2003. Betsy Reed, ed., Nothing Sacred: Women Respond to Religious Fundamentalism and Terror. New Classified Advertising Order Form York: Thunder’s Mouth Press. Deborah L. Rhode, ed., The Difference “Difference” Makes: Women and Leadership. Stanford, CA: Let the Women’s Review promote your service, sell your product, announce a Stanford University Press, 2003. job, education or travel opportunity, or publicize your conference or workshop. Rosemarie Robotham, ed., Mending the World: Stories of Family by Contemporary Black Writers. New York: BasicCivitas, 2003. Rosetta E. Ross, Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion, and Civil Rights. Minneapolis, Rates: $1.15 per word per insertion for 1-3 insertions MN: Fortress Press, 2003. $1.05 per word per insertion for 4-7 insertions Margaret Scott, ed., The Katherine Mansfield Notebooks: Complete Edition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (The writer’s private notes, letters and diary entries por- $.95 per word per insertion for 8 or more insertions tray the complex woman within.) Deborah Small, Routine Contaminations. San Diego, CA: Cedar Hill. (A look at the impact, per- I All Classified ads must be prepaid by check, VISA or MasterCard. sonally as well as socially, of the nuclear and chemical landscapes of the past fifty years.) Telephone numbers and e-mail addresses count as two words. Janna Malamud Smith, A Potent Spell: Mother Love and the Power of Fear. New York: Houghton Abbreviations count as one word each. Mifflin, 2003. (An argument that mothers feel the most fear of losing their children and that this fear has historically been a great, yet underrated, motivator for them.) I Copy must reach us by the 5th of the month prior to an issue cover date Siroj Sorajjakool, Child in Thailand: Listening to Rahab. New York: Haworth, 2003. Dianne Swann-Wright, A Way out of No Way: Claiming Family and Freedom in the New South. (e.g., May 5 for the June issue); please type or write legibly. Charlottesville, VA: Press. (The changing relationships and identi- I Advertising is accepted at the publisher’s discretion. Services and products ties of African Americans following the Civil War and emancipation into the beginning of the twentieth century.) have not been tested; listings do not imply endorsement by the Women’s Monica Maria Tetzlaff, Cultivating a New South: Abbie Holmes Christensen and the Politics of Race Review. and Gender, 1852-1938. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Perry Willson, Peasant Women and Politics in Fascist Italy: The Massaie Rurali. New York: Routledge. For more information or to place your ad, call Shelley at 781-283-2552 or email Louisa Young, The Book of the Heart. New York: Doubleday, 2003. (A look at the many dif- ferent meanings the image of the heart has been assigned, from the physical to the [email protected]. romantic and everything in between.)

The Women’s Review of Books / Vol. XX, No. 5 / February 2003 23 continued from page 23 der. Visiting scholars whose work connects ideal site for bringing together scholars from with the IRW’s 2003-2004 faculty-graduate around the world to study the complex and Miscellaneous Humanities, Faculty of Arts, York University, seminar “Femininities, Masculinities, and the changing faces of globalization. The diverse invites applications for a tenure-stream position Politics of Sexual Difference(s)” are especially ethnic and racial population of the islands, Mark My Words, Academic and at the Assistant Professor level in the field of welcome. The IRW offers private offices, with its own complex history of western colo- Professional Editorial Services www.mark- Cultures of the Americas: Traditional and library privileges and contacts with Rutgers’ nialism and labor immigration from Japan, mywords.ca “Give wings to your words.” Popular. A Ph.D. at the time of appointment is many leading scholars working on women and China, the Philippines and elsewhere makes required, an active program of research is gender. Next door to the Institute, the Hawai`i itself a microcosm of globalization “We sing, write prayers, search ancient texts expected. Prospective candidates must be quali- Wittenborn Scholars Residence offers attrac- within its own shores. Application Deadline is for Shekhina...” CREATIVE WRITING fied to conduct research in African-Canadian tive, low-cost housing reserved for scholars April 1, 2003. Detailed information and appli- SERVICES Nancy Shiffrin PhD and African-American literature and culture and affiliated with the IRW or the other women’s cation materials available on the University of author/editor/teacher helps aspiring writers to teach courses in these areas, from interdisci- units. Applications will be accepted until all Hawai`i Women’s Studies, Office for Women’s achieve publication, personal satisfaction. plinary perspectives, in first- and second-year positions are filled. For information please Research website at http://www.hawaii.edu, or Reasonable rates. Individualized approach. Foundations courses, third- and fourth-year check our webpage: http://irw.rutgers.edu; contact Dr. Kathy Ferguson, Director, http://home.earthlink.net/~nshiffrin, courses, and graduate courses. This appointment email: [email protected]; or call: (732) 932-9072. Women’s Studies Program, University of [email protected] THE HOLY LET- is subject to budgetary approval. Salary depends Hawaii, 2424 Maile Way, Saunders 722, TERS (poems) and MY JEWISH NAME upon qualification and experience. Applicants Gender and Globalization in Asia and the Honolulu, HI 96822; Ph (808) 956-8835; Fx (essays) order from publisher http:// should send a cover letter, c.v., and a sample of Pacific. Office for Women’s Research, (808) 956-9616; e-mail [email protected]. www.greatunpublished.com or author POB scholarly work of not more than twenty pages, University of Hawai`i at Manoa. What is 1506 Santa Monica CA 90406 310.302.1107. and arrange for three confidential letters of rec- meant by globalization, and how are women ommendation to be sent no later than March 30, active in, and acted upon by, the processes Travel/Rentals Experienced editor. Short stories, disserta- 2003, to: Professor Doug Freake, Division of involved in globalization? This program, under tions, scholarly, fiction, nonfiction manuscripts. Humanities, York University, 4700 Keele Street, the auspices of the Office for Women’s Carol Christ leads two programs in Greece: Reasonable, detailed, thorough work. Toronto ON Canada M3J 1P3. York University Research and the Women’s Studies Program at “Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete” and “Sacred References. Carolyn J. Lewis. (231)223-9880; has an Affirmative Action Program with respect the University of Hawai`i, is focused on Journey in Greece.” Ariadne Institute, P.O. Box [email protected]. to its faculty and librarian appointments. The addressing these and related questions. 791596, New Orleans, LA 70179-1596. designated groups are women, racial/visible Research themes include: women and econom- Phone/fax: (504) 486-9119; Email: insti- Editor. Books, dissertations, smaller proj- minorities, persons with disabilities and aborigi- ic transformation; women’s health globally; [email protected]; www.goddessari- ects. Cornell Ph.D. Background in anthro- nal peoples. Persons in these groups must self- migration/refugees/diaspora movements and adne.org. pology, history and literature. $25/hour. identify in order to participate in the Affirmative communities; militarism and global violence; Contact Carol at: [email protected]; or Action Program. The Division of Humanities domestic violence and victimization; gender, Sunny Greece! Small island house! Weekly, (925) 449-7860. welcomes applications from persons in these race and representation; global connections of monthly. On isolated terraced mountain slope groups. The Affirmative Action Program can be indigenous peoples; and reparation move- overlooking sea. Breathtaking sunsets, moon- Feminist Editor. Ph.D. Prize-winning found on York’s website at www.yorku.ca/acad- ments and interracial justice. We seek scholars sets. Dramatic hikes. Marvelous peace. author. Twenty years’ experience editing jobs/ or a copy can be obtained by calling the from Asia-Pacific and other nations who wish Moonrock: (614) 986-6945; email: WISE- every imaginable kind of writing. affirmative action office at 416-736-5713. to extend or initiate work on gender and glob- [email protected]. References provided, including many Canadian citizens and permanent residents will alization within an Asia-Pacific context. Work happy WRB readers. (510) 524-7913, be considered first for this position. that spans and links diverse disciplines and Quaint Writer’s Cottage for Rent. [email protected]. addresses one or more of the themes will be Rosendale-Kingston area, 1/2 hour south of particularly favored, as will work that speaks to Woodstock, 1 1/2 hr from NYC. 400 sf, Do you remember the first time you read Research Opportunities audiences both inside and outside of the uni- $700/mo. Or weekend rental. 212.868.1934. Our Bodies, Ourselves? Historian Wendy versity. The University of Hawai`i is uniquely Kline (University of Cincinnati) is conducting RUTGERS INSTITUTE FOR positioned to support the cross-disciplinary Sunny 1-Bedroom House for Rent. an online survey to document the impact of RESEARCH ON WOMEN invites applica- study of the complex dynamics connecting Rosendale-Kingston area, 1/2 hour south of the book on women’s lives. To participate in tions from post-doctoral scholars in any disci- gender and race to globalization. Our location Woodstock, 1 1/2 hr from NYC. 1100 sf, the study, visit her website at pline whose work focuses on women and gen- at the hub of the Pacific Rim makes this an 1000/mo. 212.868.1934. http://oz.uc.edu/~paulawk/.

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