The Women’s Review of Books Vol. XX, No. 8 May 2003 74035 $4.00 I In This Issue I The first biography of Zora Neale Hurston to appear in over 25 years, Wrapped in Rainbows is a gracefully written account that quotes liberally from Hurston’s own eloquent words, says reviewer Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, who also asks whether author Valerie Boyd should have looked more deeply at the woman behind the icon, p. 8. I Susan McDougal served 21 months in prison for refusing to testify before grand juries investigating the White- water case against Bill and Hillary Clinton. She tells her story in The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk—but reviewer Emily Maruja Bass concludes that McDougal has not really come clean, p. 5. I Jean Kilbourne, whose own books and films have presented pioneering Zora Neale Hurston, 1934. From Wrapped in Rainbows. analyses of the exploitation of women in advertising, examines Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers, Alissa Quart’s new exposé of how corporations are manipulating adolescents, p. 7. Good women by Adele Logan Alexander I Was Emmeline Pankhurst, the Being Good: Women’s Moral Values in Early America most well-known of England’s mili- by Martha Saxton. New York: Hill & Wang, tant suffragettes, ultimately a radical feminist or a conservative? June 2003, 380 pp., $30.00 hardcover. Purvis ponders Pankhurst’s life and I political evolution in a new biography, n Being Good, Martha Saxton explores century frontier Missouri, especially St. reviewed by Barbara Winslow, p. 13. the ways in which various American Louis. Examining the cycles of women’s I societies have defined morality, in par- lives from childhood into puberty, ticular, women’s virtue, and the conse- through adulthood (with and without quences for those who diverged from the male partners, with and without children), I and more... “straight and narrow.” Saxton explains why into old age, Saxton shows the “lifelong 05> and how this moral quest among women interrelationship among women’s behav- of differing races and classes truly matters. ior, feelings, and the moral system To accomplish this complicated task, designed to control them.” Saxton compares black, white, and native Little has been written previously (cer- American women in seventeenth-century tainly little that I know of) that compares 0374470 74035 colonial Massachusetts; eighteenth-centu- the various experiences and expectations PRINTED IN THE USA ry Tidewater, Virginia; and nineteenth- continued on page four The Women’s Review Contents of Books Wellesley College Center for Research on Women I Wellesley, MA 02481 1 Adele Logan Alexander Being Good: Women’s Moral Values in Early America by Martha Saxton (781) 283-2087/ (888) 283-8044 www.wellesley.edu/WomensReview 3 Linda Gardiner I THE WAY WE WERE: Founding editor Linda Gardiner looks back at twenty Volume XX, No. 8 years in the editor’s chair May 2003 5 Emily Maruja Bass I The Woman Who Wouldn’t Talk: Why I Refused to Testify Against the FOUNDING EDITOR: Linda Gardiner Clintons and What I Learned in Jail by Susan McDougal EDITOR IN CHIEF: Amy Hoffman PRODUCTION EDITOR: Amanda Nash Judith Beth Cohen I All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Martha Nichols, 6 Jan Zita Grover 7 Jean Kilbourne I Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers by Alissa Quart POETRY EDITOR: Robin Becker ADVERTISING MANAGER: Anita D. McClellan 8 Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts I Wrapped In Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd OFFICE MANAGER: Nancy Wechsler EDITORIAL BOARD: Margaret Andersen I Robin Becker I Claudia M. Christie I 10 Helena Goscilo I The Slynx and Pushkin’s Children: Writings on Russia and Russians Marsha Darling I Anne Fausto-Sterling I by Tatyana Tolstaya Carol Gilligan I Sandra Harding I Nancy Hartsock I Carolyn Heilbrun I Evelyn Fox Keller I Jean Baker Miller I Ruth Perry I 11 Susanna J. Sturgis I Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories and The Mount Peggy Phelan I Helene Vivienne Wenzel by Carol Emshwiller EDITORIAL POLICY: 12 Heather Love I An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures The Women’s Review of Books is feminist but not restricted to any one conception of feminism; by Anne Cvetkovich all writing that is neither sexist, racist, homo- phobic, nor otherwise discriminatory will be 13 Barbara Winslow I Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography by June Purvis welcome. We seek to represent the widest pos- sible range of feminist perspectives both in the books reviewed and in the content of the 14 Martha Gies I Selected Prose and Prose-Poems by Gabriela Mistral; A Queer Mother for reviews. We believe that no one of us, alone or the Nation by Licia Fiol-Matta in a group, can speak for feminism, or women, as such; all of our thinking and writing takes place in a specific political, social, ethnic and 16 Kate Daniels I The Unswept Room by Sharon Olds sexual context, and a responsible review peri- odical should reflect and further that diversity. 17 Emily Toth I Swamp Songs: The Making of an Unruly Woman by Sheryl St. Germain The Women’s Review takes no editorial stance; all the views expressed in it represent the opinion of the individual authors. 17 Elaine Terranova I Two Poems ADVERTISING POLICY: 18 Marie-Elise Wheatwind I What Night Brings by Carla Trujillo The Women’s Review accepts both display and classified advertising. Classified rates are The Bookshelf $1.15 per word, with a ten word minimum. 19 The base rate for display ads is $53 per col- umn inch; for more information on rates and available discounts, call or write to the adver- tising manager. The Women’s Review will not accept advertising which is clearly inappropri- Contributors ate to the goals of a feminist publication; however, as we are unable to investigate the ADELE LOGAN ALEXANDER is an associate professor of history at George Washington University. Her most recent publication accuracy of claims made by our advertisers, was Homelands and Waterways: The American Journey of the Bond Family, 1846-1926. She is preparing a book about the African-American publication of an advertisement does not rep- resent endorsement by The Women’s Review. internationalist, Ida Gibbs Hunt. Advertising inquiries: call 781-283-2560. EMILY MARUJA BASS practices law in New York. The National Law Journal named her one of ten “Stand Out Attorneys” in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for the year 2000. The Women’s Review of Books (ISSN #0738- JUDITH BETH COHEN is the faculty coordinator of the interdisciplinary studies master’s program at Lesley University in 1433) is published monthly except August by Cambridge, Massachusetts. She recently completed a memoir, Shocking Mother: A Daughter’s Story, and is looking for a publisher. Her The Women’s Review, Inc., 828 Washington Street, Wellesley, MA 02481. Annual subscrip- recent fiction can be found in 581Split, The Best of Rosebud, and Points of Entry: Cross-Currents in Storytelling. tions are $27.00 for individuals and $47.00 for KATE DANIELS is the author, most recently, of Four Testimonies: Poems. She teaches in the English department at Vanderbilt University. institutions. Overseas postage fees are an additional $20.00 airmail or $5.00 surface mail MARTHA GIES teaches creative writing at the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and at a to all countries outside the US. Back issues are summer workshop in Veracruz, Mexico. Her many published essays and short stories include works on Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, available for $4.00 per copy. Please allow 6-8 and her own travels in Chile. weeks for all subscription transactions. Periodicals class postage paid at Boston, MA HELENA GOSCILO, UCIS Research Professor of Slavic at the University of Pittsburgh, writes on gender and culture in Russia. She and additional mailing offices. POSTMAS- has authored and edited more than a dozen volumes, among them TNT: The Explosive World of Tatyana Tolstaya’s Fiction and Politicizing Magic: TER: send address corrections to The Women’s From Russian to Soviet Wondertales (with M. Balina and M. Lipovetsky). Her current projects include Fade From Red: Screening the Ex-Enemy Review of Books, Wellesley College Center for During the Nineties, which analyzes celluloid images of former cold war antagonists in Russian and American film. Research on Women, Wellesley, MA 02481. JEAN KILBOURNE is the author of Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel, a lecturer, and the creator of The Women’s Review of Books is a project of the Wellesley College Center for Research on several award-winning films, including the Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women series. There is an extensive resource list on her Women. As an autonomous publication it has website, www.jeankilbourne.com. its own editorial board and board of directors, HEATHER LOVE is a postdoctoral fellow in literature at Harvard University. Next year she will begin teaching gender studies and who set policy with regard to its editorial, twentieth-century literature in the English department at the University of Pennsylvania. financial and organizational character. The Women’s Review is distributed by Total SHARIFA RHODES-PITTS writes about books for Africana.com, the Boston Phoenix, and Black Issues Book Review among others. She is Circulation, New York City, NY; Ingram, originally from Houston, Texas. Nashville, TN; and Armadillo Trading, Culver SUSANNA J. STURGIS discovered women’s fantasy and science fiction in the late 1970s and has been reading, reviewing, and occa- City, CA. All other distribution is handled directly by The Women’s Review. sionally writing and editing it ever since.