The Women’s Review of Books Vol. XXI, No. 7 April 2004 74035 $4.00 In This Issue Listen Here, an anthology of and www.cricket-press.com web.qx.net/sara stories, poems, and memoirs by Appalachian women, is like an old- fashioned general store—stocked with the basics as well as with incongruous, unexpected treasures. Cover story D Media critic Jennifer Pozner talks with She’s Not There author Jennifer Finney Boylan—formerly James—about why reporters are asking the same questions of trans- sexuals now as they were 15 or even 20 years ago. Public awareness has changed, says Boylan. Why hasn’t Dateline’s? p. 5. While debunking the idea that science and politics can ever be completely separated, Anne Fausto- Sterling provides a “recipe” for ana- Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia cover lyzing Bush administration fuzzy photo by Sara L. Turner © 2004. science. p. 7. When the results of the Women’s Health Initiative study of so-called Hormone Replacement Longing for persimmons Therapy for menopause were by Trish Crapo released, women all over the coun- try quit Premarin cold turkey, fear- Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia edited by Sandra L. Ballard and ing breast cancer. In The Greatest Patricia L. Hudson. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, Experiment Ever Performed on 2003, 673 pp., $45.00 hardcover. Women, veteran health writer Barbara Seaman tells the story of the drug that was supposed to make urwood’s was a stuffed-full dry- were cats everywhere. I worked over there goods store in the mountains of at Durwood’s, selling his wife’s home- us “feminine forever.” p. 12. D North Carolina, the kind of place made fried pies, something you might not where dusty boxes of outdated Christmas expect to find in a hardware store... and more... ornaments were jumbled on the shelves Durwood’s was a place where people went with hammers, “which were mixed in with for more than what they could buy. You 04> screwdrivers, which were mixed in with can go down to Kmart for a box of nails drill bits, which were mixed in with exten- if that’s all you want.” sion cords.… If you were wanting nails,” Listen Here is a lot like Durwood’s. Ruth, the narrator of Catherine Landis’ Landis is only one of 105 women writers novel Some Days There’s Pie, says, “you had represented in this new anthology, in 74470 74035 03 to scoop them out of a wooden keg and which fiction is mixed in with poetry, PRINTED IN THE USA weigh them on a rusting scale, and there continued on page 3 The Women’s Review Contents of Books Center for Research on Women Wellesley College 1 Trish Crapo Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia edited by Sandra L. Ballard and 106 Central Street Wellesley, MA 02481 Patricia L. Hudson (781) 283-2087/ (888) 283-8044 www.wellesley.edu/WomensReview 4 Letters Volume XXI, No. 7 April 2004 4 Jennifer L. Pozner She’s Not There: A Life In Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan EDITOR IN CHIEF: Amy Hoffman 5 Jennifer L. Pozner GENDER IMMIGRANT: A conversation with Jennifer Finney Boylan [email protected] PRODUCTION EDITOR: Amanda Nash 7 Anne Fausto-Sterling IS SCIENCE OBJECTIVE? The Bush administration has been criticized [email protected] for mixing science and politics. But is this really the problem? CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Martha Nichols, Jan Zita Grover 9 Joy Connolly Olympia Morata: The Complete Writings of an Italian Heretic edited and POETRY AND CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: translated by Holt N. Parker Robin Becker Mary Cappello The Red Passport by Katherine Shonk ADVERTISING MANAGER: Anita D. McClellan 10 [email protected] 11 Ritu Menon The Sari by Mukulika Banerjee and Daniel Miller OFFICE MANAGER: Nancy Wechsler [email protected] 12 Cynthia A. Pearson The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women: Exploding STUDENT WORKERS: Nissa Hiatt, Martha the Estrogen Myth by Barbara Seaman Ortiz, Bethany Towne EDITORIAL BOARD: Margaret Andersen 14 Brooks Robards Jane Austen on Screen edited by Gina Macdonald and Andrew F. Macdonald Robin Becker Claudia M. Christie Marsha Darling Anne Fausto-Sterling 14 Jody Bolz Two poems Carol Gilligan Sandra Harding Nancy Hartsock Evelyn Fox Keller Jean Baker 15 Alison Townsend Livelihood by Phoebe MacAdams; Embellishments by Virginia Chase Sutton Miller Ruth Perry Peggy Phelan Helene Vivienne Wenzel 16 Anne Marie Todkill Am I Still A Woman? Hysterectomy and Gender Identity by Jean Elson EDITORIAL POLICY: 17 Karla Jay The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris Between the Wars edited by Whitney Chadwick The Women’s Review of Books is feminist but not restricted to any one conception of feminism; all and Tirza True Latimer writing that is neither sexist, racist, homophobic, nor otherwise discriminatory is welcome. We 18 Susanne Boitano The Habit: A History of the Clothing of Catholic Nuns by Elizabeth Kuhns seek to represent the widest possible range of feminist perspectives both in the books 19 Barbara Sjoholm The World: Travels 1950-2000 by Jan Morris reviewed and in the content of the reviews. We believe that no one of us can speak for femi- 20 The Bookshelf nism, or women, as such; all of our thinking and writing takes place in a specific political, social, ethnic, and sexual context, and a respon- sible review periodical should reflect and fur- ther that diversity. The Women’s Review takes no editorial stance; all the views expressed in it rep- Contributors resent the opinion of the individual authors. ADVERTISING POLICY: SUSANNE BOITANO is a freelance writer living in Jamaica CYNTHIA PEARSON joined the women’s health movement Visit www.wellesley.edu/WomensReview to Plain, MA. While she thinks nuns might really be onto something, the night she saw cervical self-examination. Four years earlier, book an ad online; preview the current issue she can’t imagine missing out on the new spring fashions. Carol Downer first shared cervical self-examination with members and classified ads; and download a media kit of a Los Angeles abortion rights group after being inspired by the including display, classified, and line rates, JODY BOLZ, an editor of the journal Poet Lore, teaches at transformative potential of direct action when she heard a radio sizes and shapes, policies, and deadlines. George Washington University. Her poems have appeared recently account of Alice Wolfson’s disruption of the Senate pill hearings. in The American Scholar, Ploughshares, and River Styx, as well as in a Pearson began working at the National Women’s Health Network The Women’s Review of Books (ISSN #0738- number of anthologies. Her first book, A Lesson in Narrative Time, 1433) is published monthly except August by in 1987 and has been its executive director since 1996. will be published in October by Gihon Books. The Women’s Review, Inc., 828 Washington JENNIFER L. POZNER is a freelance writer and the founding Street, Wellesley, MA 02481. Annual subscrip- MARY CAPPELLO is a professor of English at the University director of Women In Media & News (WIMN), a media monitor- tions are $27.00 for individuals and $47.00 for of Rhode Island. She is the author of the memoir, Night Bloom, ing, training, and outreach organization. She’s so fascinated by institutions. Overseas postage fees are an and most recently, “Moscow, 9/11,” in Raritan, an essay on what it media portrayals of gender that she conducts multimedia presenta- additional $20.00 airmail or $5.00 surface mail was like to teach creative writing at the Gorky Literary Institute in to all countries outside the US. Back issues are tions on gender roles in “reality TV” on college campuses Moscow following the events of September 11th. She is compos- available for $4.00 per copy. Please allow 6-8 throughout the country. She can be reached at ing a book-length essay on “awkwardness.” weeks for all subscription transactions. [email protected]. Periodicals class postage paid at Boston, MA JOY CONNOLLY teaches classics and the history of political BROOKS ROBARDS is a poet, journalist, and professor emerita and additional mailing offices. POSTMAS- thought at Stanford University. This year she is writing a book on at Westfield State College, with an MA and AB in English litera- TER: send address corrections to The Women’s Ciceronian political theory and its modern reception at the Center ture and a PhD in communication studies. The author of 10 Review of Books, Wellesley College Center for for Human Values, Princeton University. Research on Women, Wellesley, MA 02481. books, including Arnold Schwarzenegger (1992), she writes about and TRISH CRAPO is a freelance writer and editor who lives in does radio commentary on film. The Women’s Review of Books is a project of Leyden, MA. Her poems have appeared in anthologies and jour- the Wellesley College Center for Research BARBARA SJOHOLM is the editor of Steady as She Goes: on Women. nals, most recently Southern Poetry Review. She is working on a novel. Women’s Adventures at Sea and the forthcoming travel book The The Women’s Review is distributed by Total ANNE FAUSTO-STERLING is professor of biology and gen- Pirate Queen: In Search of Grace O’Malley and Other Legendary Women of Circulation, New York City, NY, and Ingram, der studies at Brown University. Her most recent book is Sexing the the Sea. Her essays have appeared in American Scholar, Brick, The Nashville, TN. All other distribution is han- Body: Gender and the Construction of Sexuality. New York Times, and Smithsonian. Under the name Barbara Wilson, dled directly by The Women’s Review. she is the author of Blue Windows and Gaudi Afternoon.