Amanda Nash Went Right to the Source: the Author

The Women’s Review of Books Vol. XXI, No. 2 November 2003 74035 $4.00 In This Issue Even in the case of an artist like Louise Bourgeois, who has written extensively about the origins of her artworks in her life experience, the relationship between memory and art is never transparent or straight- forward, says reviewer Patricia G. Berman. Cover story D In The Fifth Book of Peace, her “nonfiction-fiction-nonfiction sandwich,” Maxine Hong Kingston experiments with new narrative forms, forgoing the excitement of conflict in an attempt to encom- pass the experience of peace and community. p. 5 Louise Bourgeois in her Brooklyn studio in 1993, with To find out what makes 3, Julie Shredder (1983) and Spider (then in progress). From Hilden’s novel of sexual obsession Runaway Girl: The Artist Louise Bourgeois and experimentation, so haunting, reviewer Amanda Nash went right to the source: The author. Art and autobiography Interview, p. 11 by Patricia G. Berman Could Hillary Rodham Clinton Three books examine the career of artist Louise Bourgeois became America’s first woman president? Judith Nies reads the senator’s n Christmas day 2003, the artist like environment suggestive of pulsating memoir Living History—along with Louise Bourgeois will turn 92. Her viscera, and I Do, I Undo, I Redo (2000), the other new books that examine O vitality, wit, and ability to fuse titanically scaled steel towers that initiated excess with elegance continue to rival the the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in women’s political leadership in this works of artists one-third her age. In a London, contain pockets of the uncanny, country. p. 13 career spanning over 60 years, she seems to narrative details in otherwise abstract com- have been everywhere first, helping to pio- positions. These, and many of her other neer the arts of installation and assemblage, works, seem to disclose her most intimate- moving between abstraction and figuration memories and traumas, as well as her in the service of a sustained narrative, and attempts to grapple with them. and more... shaping some of the terms of later 20th- For many in Bourgeois’s audience, her century feminist art practices. Sculptures work has appeared as a lengthy dialogue 11> such as Fillette (Young Girl, 1968), whose with her internal demons. Supporting her extravagantly elongated and bulbous forms production is a large volume of interviews suggest both vulva and phallus, provide and published writings issued by the artist. some of the most startling images of sexu- In them, Bourgeois asserts a homology ality of the later 20th century. Her large- between her work and her life: “I want to be 74470 74035 03 scale installations, such as The Destruction of like a glass house. There is no mask in my PRINTED IN THE USA the Father (1974), a latex-and-plaster, cave- continued on page three The Women’s Review Contents of Books Wellesley College Center for Research on Women Wellesley, MA 02481 1 Patricia G. Berman Runaway Girl: The Artist Louise Bourgeois by Jan Greenberg and (781) 283-2087/ (888) 283-8044 Sandra Jordan; Louise Bourgeois by Robert Storr, Paolo Herkenhoff, and Allan Schwartzman; www.wellesley.edu/WomensReview Volume XXI, No. 2 Louise Bourgeois: Intime Abstraktionen/Intimate Abstractions edited by Beatrice E. November 2003 Stammer, Kathrin Becker, Antje Weitzel, and Valeria Schulte-Fischedick EDITOR IN CHIEF: Amy Hoffman [email protected] 4 Letters PRODUCTION EDITOR: Amanda Nash [email protected] 5 Jan Clausen The Fifth Book of Peace by Maxine Hong Kingston CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Martha Nichols, Jan Zita Grover 7 Lois W. Banner Reforming Women’s Fashion, 1850-1920: Politics, Health, and Art POETRY EDITOR: Robin Becker by Patricia A. Cunningham ADVERTISING MANAGER: Anita D. McClellan [email protected] Susan Brownmiller Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left 8 OFFICE MANAGER: Nancy Wechsler by Susan Braudy [email protected] EDITORIAL BOARD: Margaret Andersen 9 Anne Fausto-Sterling American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy and the Science of Robin Becker Claudia M. Christie Marsha Darling Anne Fausto-Sterling Nationalism by Nancy Ordover Carol Gilligan Sandra Harding Nancy Hartsock Evelyn Fox Keller Jean Baker Amanda Nash 3 by Julie Hilden Miller Ruth Perry Peggy Phelan 10 Helene Vivienne Wenzel 11 Amanda Nash 3: A conversation with Julie Hilden EDITORIAL POLICY: The Women’s Review of Books is feminist but not 12 Karen Kahn The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work restricted to any one conception of feminism; all writing that is neither sexist, racist, homo- by Arlie Russell Hochschild phobic, nor otherwise discriminatory is wel- come. We seek to represent the widest possi- ble range of feminist perspectives both in the 13 Judith Nies Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton; Anticipating Madame President books reviewed and in the content of the reviews. We believe that no one of us can edited by Robert P. Watson and Ann Gordon; Madame President: Women Blazing the speak for feminism, or women, as such; all of Leadership Trail by Eleanor Clift and Tom Brazaitis; Women Transforming Congress our thinking and writing takes place in a spe- cific political, social, ethnic, and sexual con- edited by Cindy Simon Rosenthal text, and a responsible review periodical should reflect and further that diversity. The Women’s Review takes no editorial stance; all the 15 Susanna J. Sturgis Changing Planes: Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin views expressed in it represent the opinion of the individual authors. 16 Carolyne Wright Here There Was Once a Country by Vénus Khoury-Ghata; She Says ADVERTISING POLICY: by Vénus Khoury-Ghata Visit www.wellesley.edu/WomensReview to book an ad online; preview the current issue and classified ads; and download a media kit 16 Katherine Soniat Two Poems including display, classified, and line rates, sizes and shapes, policies, and deadlines. 18 Linda Grant Niemann Eclipse: Stories by Jeanne Bryner The Women’s Review of Books (ISSN #0738- 1433) is published monthly except August by The Women’s Review, Inc., 828 Washington Street, Wellesley, MA 02481. Annual subscrip- tions are $27.00 for individuals and $47.00 for institutions. Overseas postage fees are an Contributors additional $20.00 airmail or $5.00 surface mail to all countries outside the US. Back issues are available for $4.00 per copy. Please allow 6-8 LOIS W. BANNER is professor of history and gender studies Kennesaw State University in Georgia. She is a former brake- weeks for all subscription transactions. at the University of Southern California. She is the author of man/conductor on the Southern Pacific, Union Pacific, and Periodicals class postage paid at Boston, MA Intertwined Lives: Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Their Circle. Amtrak railroads and the author of On the Rails: A Woman’s and additional mailing offices. POSTMAS- Journey and Railroad Voices. TER: send address corrections to The Women’s PATRICIA G. BERMAN is professor of art at Wellesley Review of Books, Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley, MA 02481. College. Her most recent book is James Ensor: Christ’s Entry into JUDITH NIES is a former speechwriter in the US Congress. Brussels in 1889. She is the author of Nine Women: Portraits from the American The Women’s Review of Books is a project of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Radical Tradition and editor of two books on public policy. Her Women. As an autonomous publication it has SUSAN BROWNMILLER is the author of Against Our Will: current project is a memoir and cultural history of US women its own editorial board and board of directors, Men, Women and Rape, and four subsequent books, including In in the ’60s, The Girl I Left Behind. who set policy with regard to its editorial, Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution. financial and organizational character. KATHERINE SONIAT’s The Fire Setters is available through The Women’s Review is distributed by Total JAN CLAUSEN, the recipient of a 2003 NYFA Poetry the Web del Sol/The Literary Review 2002 Online Chapbook Circulation, New York City, NY; Ingram, Nashville, TN; and Armadillo Trading, Culver Fellowship, has poems forthcoming in Bloom, Fence, The Hat, Series (www.webdelsol.com or www.theliteraryreview.org). Her City, CA. All other distribution is handled and Margie. Her most recent book is a memoir, Apples and work is forthcoming in The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, and directly by The Women’s Review. Oranges. She teaches writing at Eugene Lang College and in the Prairie Schooner. She is on the faculty at Virginia Tech and lives The contents of The Women’s Review of Books Goddard MFA Writing Program. in Blacksburg, Virginia. are copyright ©2003. All rights reserved; reprint by permission only. ANNE FAUSTO-STERLING is a professor of biology and SUSANNA J. STURGIS is a year-round resident of Martha’s gender studies at Brown University. Her most recent book is Vineyard, a seasonal tourist trap, where she is the sole support Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. of a dog, a horse, an unsold novel, and a novel in progress. She thinks Ursula K. Le Guin is overdue for the Nobel Prize KAREN KAHN is the communications director for the in Literature. Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, a nonprofit organization addressing the looming crisis in care for elders and people living CAROLYNE WRIGHT has published two volumes in with disabilities. translation of Bengali women poets Anuradha Mahapatra (Another Spring, and Darkness); and Taslima Nasrin (The Game AMANDA NASH is the production editor for The Women’s in Reverse). In progress as well is an anthology of the work of Review of Books. She was the chief cook and bottle washer of Bengali women poets and writers.

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