I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World

By Eve Ensler
Villard

I'll tell you why I bothered picking up I Am an Emotional Creature: (1) I loved the graffiti-like cover, which reminded me of the doodling I used to pen over my books in high school, and (2) I really respect and enjoy Eve Ensler's writing. I saw a performance of The Vagina Monologues and loved the subversive way she used humor and fictional stories to tackle real women's issues around the world. So, when I saw that she had released a similar collection, but targeted for girls and teens, I instantly had to pick it up.

I think this book is so important because young girls today are growing up so quickly, and there are less outlets for them to discuss important issues, like abusive relationships and safe sex, or at least, it isn't coming from a source that is from "their generation." Peppered throughout the collection are statistics called "Girl Facts" with shocking numbers on prostitution, sex slavery, eating disorders, and other girl-related issues. Apart from the Girl Facts, though, I loved how these ideas and issues are tackled through the voices of other young women and girls around the world. This collection of monologues, poems, and short stories creates a sisterhood, almost, of females who share similar bonds, despite background, interests, language, etc. That kind of unity is so great and empowering, especially during that awkward period where young girls feel like no one else feels this awkward emotions or that no one "gets" them. I think with so much real suffering happening in other parts of the world, it's difficult to remember that girls in first-world countries have their own voices and stories needing to be told, and just because it isn't anything newsworthy, doesn't mean it isn't a problem or question or anxiety worth addressing.

That being said, my favorite pieces in the collection were the fictionalized accounts of the young women in other parts of the world (as in, not America or the UK). There is a great story called "Free Barbie," about a young Chinese girl working in an assembly-line doll factory, and probably my favorite piece is an epistolary poem/letter about a young female suicide bomber. In all of these stories, especially the ones from girls in developing countries, there is such strength and resilience in their voices that even someone past puberty can feel their empowerment and be proud to be a girl.

I really love what this collection does. And I love how it celebrates girls. I think, considering the target audience, this book is definitely five stars in terms of relevance and importance, but the writing wasn't always impeccable. I mean, I don't think it has to be Pulitzer prize-worthy to accomplish the goal Ensler was going for in motivating young girls; but to be fair, while some stories about sex trafficking or dealing with being a "masculine" girl were so amazing, some of the more experimental free verse passages didn't always do it for me.

Also, I think I might have benefited more if I had read this about five years ago, when the insecurity and all that was more intense. (P.S. This does reference some graphic sexual and adult themes, which are important to read about, but some more conservative families or younger readers should be aware of that.) Regardless, I loved it and will definitely keep it around to flip through and read a couple more times throughout my lifetime.

Review by Renée McDonald

Cross-posted at Notes in the Margin

Women's Movements in the Global Era: The Power Of Local Feminisms

Edited by Amrita Basu
Westview Press

The fight for equal rights is not an easy one. What many consider basic rights in one country are denied to women in another. Nevertheless, advocates for the women's movement continue to fight throughout the world. Women's Movements in the Global Era documents the history and current activity of the women's movements in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, India, China, Poland, Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, Bolivia, Mexico, Palestine, Iran, and the United States. Each chapter begins with basic information fact sheet about the country, such as language and population, as well as detailed information about the current status of women, including literacy, political representation, and economic position.

Despite the differences in political conditions and the location in the world, many of these movements share similarities. For example, the words used in the movement have a big impact, or moreover, the creation of new words in the language needed for the women's movement. In the chapter, “The Chinese Women's Movement in the Context of Globalization,” authors Naihua Zhang and Ping-Chun Hsuing note that the Chinese language did not have a word for domestic violence until 1995. Before then, the closest word was dalaopo, which means wife beating and indicates that the wife is a piece of property.

Another word that has a stigma attached to it in many countries, including the United States, is feminism. Elzbieta Matynia, author of the chapter “Polish Feminism Between the Local and the Global: A Task of Translation,” states, “feminism, the word, which exists in [the Slavic] languages, is so pejoratively loaded that for a long time it was considered political suicide for a woman active in public life to identify herself with feminism and feminist issues.” To keep these movements going, many activists chose to identify their work as “gender equality” or “women's movement” to prevent alienating other people who have the negative connotation of the word feminist.

While a thick book, Women's Movements in the Global Era provides great insight to the work women are doing around the world in the name of gender equality. Some of the chapters include photographs of the work activists are doing. Each of the authors give an in-depth coverage of the women's movement in their country, and what they hope for in the future.

Review by Elizabeth Stannard Gromisch

Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women's Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World

By Hester Eisenstein
Paradigm Publishers

I have been waiting for a book to tell me how things went wrong, how we ended up with lady cops and mothers in combat zones, how “feminist” became an insult. Did we women do it to ourselves, or were we pushed? Hester Eisenstein, professor of sociology at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City, has offered Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women's Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World, which, as promised and despite its flaws, does map elements of the neoliberal project to some “feminist” initiatives, but it is not the book I have been wanting, the one that explains, not so much the academically popular theory of “recuperation,” but how the radical women might have kept the momentum of the women’s movement going and in the right direction.

Let’s get the most obvious major flaw of the book out of the way: the near total omission of lesbian-feminism, a powerful influence in the radical wing of the women’s movement in the 1970s. Though it is like blaming a reporter for the headline on her story to blame Eisenstein for the judgments of her indexer, the lack of an index entry for lesbianism reflects the extreme once-over-lightly she gives to the historical role of this feminist tendency, which cannot be subsumed under “queer theory” or dismissed with “conflicts over suppression of lesbian influence... eventually faded.”

Eisenstein’s nuanced concern about the limitations of the “women of color” construct apparently does not extend to the inability of the category “GLBT” to comfortably incorporate Rita Mae Brown’s “woman-identified woman.” This is a glaring oversight from an author who rightfully chastises a movement which often alienated women of color and working-class women.

Eisenstein’s argument or rather arguments are directed, she insists, mostly at hegemonic, state feminism (an approved version of reform feminism). She views feminism as driving out what she calls “labor feminism,” the initiatives for women within the labor movement that resulted in laws protecting women. Essentially she argues that women’s demands for wage equality, while benefiting professional women, put working- and lower-middle class women into poorly paid service jobs and undermined the expectation of a “family wage.” These feminist demands served to facilitate more direct anti-union activities begun by big business at the same time. (She seems less interested in the exclusion of women from trade unions in the higher paying blue-collar occupations like plumbing and carpentry.) Moreover, feminist emphasis on paid labor undermined women’s work in the home and thus “welfare” programs. On a global level, feminism linked with modernity destroyed traditional societies and allowed access to markets to the forces of globalization, by focusing on such issues as “genital cutting,” which Eisenstein comes close to defending. She charges that the empowerment of individual Third World women through measures such as microfinance has taken the place of state-led development. She then recounts the use of feminist ideology in the promotion of imperialist initiatives, such as President George W. Bush crowing about liberating the women of Afghanistan from Taliban oppression, and in encouragement of Islamophobia.

The author presents a not entirely trustworthy account of feminist history and its continuance in women’s studies and a fairly standard leftist rendition of the neoliberal project—a lot of ground to cover. The reader is left to piece together her thesis from topic-based chapters that operate as silos, disrupting both the narrative history and the argument—without the aid of a Venn diagram.

In the end, she presents a post hoc analysis that stops short of proving her case against even mainstream feminism. Her solutions—maternalism, a socialist state, ACORN, and the California Nurses Association—seem neither particularly feminist nor radical. Perhaps that feminism is best that doesn’t take a gendered view of all the evils of the world but rather gives women the power of agency to uproot them.

Review by Frances Chapman

Societies of Peace: Matriarchies Past, Present and Future

Edited by Heide Goettner-Abendroth
Inanna Publications

In a time when it seems we have lost our sense of humane, egalitarian living Societies Of Peace stands out as a guide to what we can learn from matriarchies in order to save ourselves from self-destruction. This book is a collection of the presentations from the two World Congresses on Matriarchial studies. The lecturers spoke about matriarchal theory and politics and the origins of patriarchy, and profiled historical and present day matriarchs who vary ideologically from patriarchs in four main societal sectors.

Politically, matriarchies are free of power structures. Everyone in the clan has one vote and decisions are based on consensus. Hence, the society is egalitarian. This structure allows for a balanced economy, the second variance from patriarchies.

Most of these economies are agriculturally based, which makes wealth hoarding impossible, and without the ability to accumulate wealth, there is very little conflict or war. Hospitality and compassion for those less fortunate is also valued in these societies.

Becoming a woman, being pregnant, giving birth, and becoming a grandmother are sacred foundations of matriarchies, and the mother is the center of society. Clans live together in the same house and family lineage is marked through the maternal bloodline. Daughters do not leave their homes; rather, husbands join their wives’ clans. Spirituality is based on an omnipotent goddess, the creator of all that is manifested in every living person, plant, and animal. From daily worship to festivals, spirituality an integral part of the society.

The following seven parts of the book provide examples of the differences in practice in matriarchies gained from individual community studies and are divided by global region. In “Matriarchal Principles for Economies and Societies of Today,” Veronica Bennholdt-Thompson describes what the patriarchal Western economy can learn from the Isthmus-Zapotec community of southern Mexico. The market prices fluctuate depending in the customers’ loyalty to the vendor, which encourages a close-knit, community-based economy. Bennholdt-Thompson comments that Western woman finding salvation in wage working is alienating and unnatural and that since women are inherently linked to creation, not realizing one's role as a giver of life is a betrayal of one's female existence.

Malika Grasshoff (Makilam) describes the influence of modern Islam on the ancient spiritual practices of the Berber people of modern day Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. The Berber language is only spoken, not written, and is passed down by elders who are considered to be living holy books. Accordingly, older tribal spiritual practices still have modern-day influence. These spoken word histories are called taqbaylit, which is also the same word for “woman.” Despite French colonization of the region and widespread conversion to Islam, the traditions of this society still remain a stronghold.

The last remaining sections of the book offer theories of the origins of patriarchies. In “Saharasi: The Origins of Patriarchal Authoritarian Culture in Ancient Desertification,” James Demeo credits droughts, starvation, and malnutrition for the fall of matriarchies in central Africa. The human body, when put under such circumstances, has less emotional and sexual energy, which puts a strain on the ultimate foundation of the creation-based matriarchies: reproduction.

Societies Of Peace is truly fascinating on an anthropological level. It is also as a call to action to create egalitarian and peaceful societies.

Review by Sara Custer