Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart

Edited by Nina Simons with Anneke Campbell
Park Street Press

How could the title of this book not hook you? Power. Women. Heart. So, maybe I was biased from the beginning. Honestly, I was hoping that the book would be “all that.” It was.

By page fifteen, not having gotten past the editor’s introduction, I was pulsing with energy. I was ready to get my lazy butt up off the couch and pitch in. I was jonesing for my old “activist” days when I used to join in pro-choice marches and volunteer with the NW AIDS Foundation handing out condoms on the streets of Seattle.

Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart is a collection of essays that were originally presented as lectures to attendees of the annual Bioneers conferences. Nina Simons, the editor and a co-founder of Bioneers, describes it as “a nonprofit educational organization that highlights breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet.” These essays cover a vast range of topics from truly knowing one’s self to finding your inner leader to mentoring, partnering, and imagining innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems as women see them. Some of the authors are household names such as Alice Walker and Julia Butterfly Hill, and others are simply women who are spending their energies learning from and teaching others to live authentically and purposefully. They will undoubtedly be household names in their own right soon.

Each and every essay contained in Moonrise is inspiring, touching, and revitalizing to the reader. Not all of the authors are women, but each and every one of them celebrates the unique gifts that women bring to the world in the form of their vision and perspective as caring, compassionate individuals who have found ways to rise above feelings of powerlessness and living in the minority to honor their communities, societies, and, indeed, the entire planet.

There are humorous tales of women fumbling their way through, led only by their instincts and their resolve to make a difference, painful stories of loss, and everything in between. This book truly offers something for everyone and I, for one, have decided to take the bait. If there are this many strong female voices out there clamoring for a change in the way we approach our collective challenges, it’s the least I can do to join in the march.

Review by Kari O’Driscoll

The Carrie Diaries

By Candace Bushnell
Balzer and Bray

Sex and the City the television series ended six years ago. One might find this hard to believe, considering the characters and the lavish lifestyles they live have been far from gone in the mainstream media. The latest installment in the SATC enterprise is The Carrie Diaries, author Candace Bushnell’s young-adult novel that introduces audiences to Carrie Bradshaw as they’ve never seen her before—seventeen, virginal, and unsure of how to fulfill her dream becoming a writer. The young Bradshaw struggles through adolescence the same way her adult self struggled through her thirties, and with just as much, if not more, wit and insight. It’s easy to see how Carrie became Carrie as Bushnell chronicles a very real, and entertaining, teenage experience using the skills we’ve come to know her for: realistic dialogue, relatable, yet flawed, friendships; and capturing the excitement and emotion the first moments of love.

As a feminist scholar and critic, and an advocate for girl-friendly media, I was plagued by very familiar annoyances in the reading. Although adult Carrie admits in SATC (season four, episode seventeen) that her father left when she was a toddler, Bushnell posits high-school Carrie as the eldest of three girls being raised by their father since their mother died a few years earlier. Although a single dad raising three young women is certainly an alternative to the status-quo, it is not more or less feminist than a mother working full time and raising three daughters. And in the case of the latter, it provides something very important missing in both fiction and film—positive female role models.

The debate over Bushnell’s characters and their choices has been raging since the debut of the original series. In The Carrie Diaries, the author offers her own feminist commentary that is neither subtle, nor convincing. In a chapter dedicated to Carrie’s discovery of feminism, the twelve-year-old visits her local library to see her mother's favorite (fictional) feminist Mary Gordon Clark speak. The young Bradshaw is chagrined by the woman’s gruff and judgmental manner, leaving her to ponder “How can you be a feminist when you treat other women like dirt?” An excellent question, though I’d be interested in asking Bushnell “Why all feminists must be represented as angry, elite meanies?”

Unlike her adult counterpart, whose friendships offered support, honesty and resilience in the face of obstacles, the high school Carrie is surrounded by a group of friends that are competitive, highly emotional, or just plain bitchy. Her most passionate moments include falling for a narcissistic but gorgeous guy who eventually cheats on her with her best friend, developing her voice as a writer with the support of the Brown-attending George, and eventually being published in the school paper, with the help and support of the paper’s editor—her friend’s boyfriend.

As lover of pop-culture and an advocate for media literacy among the youth, especially girls, I was encouraged to find the positive elements of a story that will surely resonate with a large audience. Although Carrie’s mother is absent in reality, she is ever present in the lives of her daughters, all of which are struggling to maintain her legacy while evolving into who they will be as individuals. The biting yet quirky humor that endeared me to Carrie on SATC punctuates the tensest moments in the novel as Carrie offers teen-appropriate insights like, “Funny always makes the bad things go away.”

Unfortunately, comparing the young Carrie to the character she became on the series leaves me no less than disappointed. The Carrie created here comes out an evolved and matured being, moving forward into the next phase of her life, something that was remiss of her character when the SATC series ended, and further exacerbated in the following two films. In fact, I’d favor a film version of The Carrie Diaries over both SATC films.

Review by Alicia Sowisdral

Saints & Cannibals

By Christine Hamm
Plain View Press

If I were to list my favorite poets, the count would be long and span a modest range of styles, but several rise clearly to the top. These poets—Sharon Olds, Carolyn Forché, Sylvia Plath, and Audre Lorde, to name a few—in no way shy away from subject matter women are traditionally taught to suppress or deny: the shocking, shadowy, and infinitely juicy reality of our lives. These poets instead dive face first into the truth—especially when it hurts—and in doing so shed light on the beauty to be found glimmering quietly in the fertile mud of actual experience.

Christine Hamm is one such poet and needless to say, my list of favorites has grown after having (repeatedly) read Saints & Cannibals, Hamm’s second full-length collection. According to the poet’s website, “this book follows the story of three generations of women in America” and is told from the point of view of “historical and mythical saints and cannibals, including the Donner party, Hansel and Gretel, and a whole host of medieval female saints.”

Among the historical and mythical are more contemporary voices, all of whose stories are told in clean, vibrant free-verse. Fertility, corn, straw, cats, horses, and other animals figure prominently in the landscape of this collection. After reading each poem I was compelled to set the book down and let the precise and novel imagery sink in.

Beginning with “Up From the Root Cellar”: “Ruby plucks up a tomato, jams it against her teeth, tasting snow and rust” before shaking out her skirt, rinsing her hands and going to assist her mother as she “sprawls in the furrows... stockings dark with a wet rush” in labor with yet another baby. Ruby is dutiful but seems defined more by her internal experience than by her station or obligation in life.

Another character, whose story is told throughout the collection, is Claire, who in the poem “The Family Practice” doesn’t want to disappoint and so undergoes dentistry without Novocain. Yet “Claire was turning thirteen the way milk turns, becomes thicker, more complicated, fragrant;” will she continue to submit to what is expected of her?

We also find Joan of Arc working at the Gap, Oliver with his “urchin shirt/ rusty shoes, hat full/ of night and spiders,” and a suburban angel “with wings made of safety pins/ used tampons and bottlecaps.”

I found Saints & Cannibals to be deeply feminist as it speaks with an authentic and unapologetic honesty, telling stories that have the power to provoke an embrace of and ultimately sovereignty in our own experience.

Review by Matsya Siosal

Tillie Olsen: One Woman, Many Riddles

By Panthea Reid
Rutgers University Press

Part of Panthea Reid’s title seems to allude to Tillie Olsen’s 1961 collection of short stories, Tell Me a Riddle. It also seems to highlight the layers of complexity in a woman hailed as an iconic writer and feminist. Reid doesn’t idealize Olsen. This was a woman who began lying at a young age and continued throughout her life. She cheated on her husband, cheated Random House out of an advance for a book she never wrote, and cheated her daughter out of the experience of having a devoted and attentive mother. However, Reid does give full credit to Olsen’s work as a writer, feminist, and social activist. All great figures in history, I feel, have complicated relationships to the world and to other people. It is important to understand and acknowledge a great figure’s humanity as well as celebrating his/her greatness.

Reid was able to interview and get information from Olsen herself before Olsen’s death in 2001, and she also spoke with Olsen’s siblings, one of her daughters, other relatives, and Olsen’s colleagues and fellow writers. The book is well-researched and provides an in-depth look at her life. It doesn’t seem to have been an easy task for Reid. Reid worked on the book for ten years, and the ins and outs of Olsen’s life seem at times overwhelming.

Olsen had many roles throughout her life, and in a quote from her diary from age eighteen, she wrote: “With dozens of selves, quarreling and tearing at each other—which then is the natural self? ...None.” This seems fitting for a woman who ended up intertwined in some of the century’s most historic moments: she was a communist and revolutionary in the 1930s, promoted equal work for equal pay in the 1940s, earned the nickname “Tillie Appleseed” for planting the seeds of feminism and women’s studies, was an anti-war activist in the 1960s and 1970s, and was investigated by the FBI for subversion. The book is broken down by chapter into time periods from “Magnetic Personality: 1925-1929” and “Early Genius: 1934” to “Image Control: 1981-1996” and “Enter Biographer: 1997-2007.” It includes some black and white photographs of Olsen from childhood through to adulthood.

Reid doesn’t necessarily unravel all the riddles around Olsen, but she does an incredible job at bringing the parts of the riddles to light. We see Olsen as a self-absorbed and manipulative woman; Reid definitely knocks Olsen off any saintly pedestal. But she does this without lessening the impact of Olsen’s work. The book is readable and engaging; it isn’t just for scholars.

Review by Kristin Conard

Women Writers of the Provincetown Players: A Collection of Short Works

Edited by Judith E. Barlow
State University of New York Press

For someone whose theater knowledge is limited to a high school rendition of Cheaper by the Dozen, the compilation of plays that comprises Women Writers of the Provincetown Players were both easy and enjoyable to read. Prefaced with a twenty-three -page introduction outlining the history and significance of the group of women included in Women Writers of the Provincetown Players, the book quickly but adequately fills in the reader. Many of the plays are between ten and twenty pages, and range in subject from feminism to love, or simply intellectual entertainment. The opening line of the introduction prepares the reader for the impact these playwrights had, as “during the opening years of the twentieth century, women’s designated place in the theater was in the audience.”

To counter this irritating—to say the least—situation, a number of women writers joined the Provincetown Players, a group of radical visionaries, but hardly outcasts. These educated middle class citizens summered in Provincetown and joined together to “oppose the status quo of their conservative hometowns and [dedicate] themselves to supporting artistic innovation, questioning the capitalist system, reevaluating relations between women and men, and challenging traditional sexual mores.”

From the first play in the collection these goals are evident, yet apropos to the time. Winter’s Night by Neith Boyce opens the book on a strong feminist note by posing the radical notion that the lead character, Rachel, “is less a victim of the two brothers than of the assumption that marriage is the ideal situation for all women.” While by today’s standards the main plot of the story may appear to be an uncomfortable love triangle between a woman, her recently deceased husband, and his living brother, the real aim of the piece is to broach a touchy idea: that marriage may be more of a trap for women than the assumed salvation.

In addition to the opening chapter informing the reader to the significance of the works in Women Writers of the Provincetown Players, each play is accompanied by a short (roughly three pages) introduction giving background on the author and where the included work fits in the Provincetown Players' repertoire.

Many of the woman who contributed to this book with their theatrical works were better known for other uncommon feats for their time. Susan Glaspell, for example, was publishing long before she began her secondary education at Drake University; others, such as Rita Wellman, had been publishing since childhood. Edna St. Vincent Millay was a known poet before joining the group, and Djuna Barnes is described, impressively, as a “novelist, playwright, journalist, theater reviewer, and poet.” The book is a pleasant read, seeing the progress of women in both art and society.

Review by Tatiana Ryckman

Acts of Narrative Resistance: Women's Autobiographical Writings in the Americas

By Laura J. Beard
University of Virginia Press

Laura Beard’s study of women’s autobiography in its many forms, Acts of Narrative Resistance, is quite unique. There has to my knowledge never been a thorough single author study written which connected and compared such a variety of autobiographical texts from the Americas in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. Beard’s study focuses on women’s autobiography in Argentina, Brazil, and what she calls Indigenous Canada (some would argue that the term “Indigenous” in her appellation is superfluous, but we won’t get into that thorny discussion).

Many studies have been published on these genres in those individual countries, studies which have also pointed out some of the central themes brought forth by Beard concerning the difficulties and challenges associated with studying autobiography and its associated forms. All these topics are well summed up by Beard in her analysis, in which she indentifies these narratives “as autobiographical fiction, fictional autobiography, autobiographical novels, semi-autobiographical novels, memoirs, and testimonios.” “Testimonial writings,” as they are called in Spanish, are essential to any study of autobiography in the Americas and quite hotly debated. Many questions are implicit in the study of the testimonio: authorship (who wrote the book?), veracity (did that person tell a truthful story?), and a (sometimes questionable) literary value (can this story be considered literature and/or women’s writing?).

The first two parts of Beard’s study involve cross-cultural analysis. All four authors written about in the first two parts are well known in the Latin American “feminist” canon. Part 1 examines the writing of Helena Parente Cunha of Brazil and Argentina’s Luisa Futoransky. In Part 2, Beard discusses Ana María Shúa of Argentina and Nélida Piñon of Brazil. Parente Cunha was translated and published in English in 1989 by the University of Texas Press while Piñon was published in English only ten years later. While Shúa was published in translation in 1998, Futoransky has only had two translations published in English. All four authors are widely studied by academics worldwide. Part 3 is entirely consecrated to the indigenous writers of Canada, Lee Maracle and Shirley Sterling. Although recognized in Canada and examined in recent texts focused on indigenous literature, these native women are still much less studied than the four other women in Beard's book.

Beard’s analytical concept of “Narrative Resistance” is not new, since one of the founding principles of feminist criticism is to examine (all) women’s narratives as new and separate voices in a literary world long dominated by patriarchal tradition. However, Beard coins a neologism to define the works of these six women: natiobiography, defined as the works of women “presenting the (fictionalized) histories of their families as the histories of their nations.”

Perhaps one of the limitations of the study is that Beard did not attempt to draw more explicit parallels between the writing of the indigenous Canadian women and that of the South American writers; the indigenous women, Maracle and Sterling, are once again somewhat marginalized from the main comparisons, quite exceptional, perhaps, when likened to their mostly “white middle-class” counterparts. Although Parente Cunha claims possible African ancestry, Shua Shúa and Futoransky are of Jewish origin while Piñon is of Galician extraction. Indigenous women are once again the doubly-colonized as opposed to the other women writers examined, in most cases “colonizers of,” or immigrants to, the American continent.

Nevertheless, Beard’s study, well structured and meticulously explained, is obligatory reading for those interested in or working on (the concept of) autobiography. It is well-written and highly readable and demonstrates the significance of telling stories for women.

Review by Sophie M. Lavoie