Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World [Paperback]

Judy Grahn (Author), Charlene Spretnak (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 1994

"Blood, Bread, and Roses" reclaims women's myths and stories, chronicling the ways in which women's actions and the teaching of myth have interacted over the millenia. Grahn argues that culture has been a weaving between the genders, a sharing of wisdom derived from menstruation. Her rich interpretations of ancient menstrual rites give us a new and hopeful story of culture's beginnings based on the integration of body, mind, and spirit found in women's traditions. "Blood, Bread, and Roses" offers all of us a way back to understanding the true meaning of women's menstraul power.

Foreword by Charlene Spretnak

"[Grahn's] intriguing excursion through folklore, myth, religion, anthropology and history bespeaks a feminist conviction that male origin stories must be balanced by a recognition of women's central role in shaping civilization."
-Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In native and prehistoric cultures around the world, a menstruating woman carried out rituals in which she was secluded--not allowed to see light--but emerged triumphantly at the end of her period. Grahn ( Another Mother Tongue ) believes these rites taught women principles of separation and synchronic relationship (reinforced by women's awareness that the menstrual cycle was in rhythm with the moon's phases). This "menstrual logic," she adds, was transmitted to men, who extended it. Stretching the evidence thin to fit her theory, Grahn uses menstrual ritual and "menstrual consciousness" to explain the orignis of mathematics, astronomy, marriage rites (the bride's dress in Europe was once red), cosmetics, cooking and mourning customs. Her intriguing excursion through folklore, myth, religion, anthropology and history bespeaks a feminist conviction that male origin stories must be balanced by a recognition of women's central role in shaping civilization.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Best known for several books of poetry ( The Queen of Wands , LJ 12/15/83, among others), Grahn presents a bold interpretation of the rites and traditions surrounding menstruation. Using a wide range of sources in mythology and anthropology, Grahn speculates that early women's recognition of the regular cycle of menstruation, for example, may have first suggested ideas of pattern and measurement that eventually led to mathematics and other sciences. The historical separation and seclusion of the menstruant from the immediate community and the reverence and apprehension with which she was treated had long-range implications for clothing, makeup, and food. A thought-provoking alternative cultural history, Grahn's work will interest readers in women's studies and anthropology as well as informed general readers.
- Patricia A. Beaber, Trenton State Coll. Lib., N.J.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (October 31, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807075051
• ISBN-13: 978-0807075050
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,254,283 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fear of a Red Nation, August 29, 2002

By 

Miss Poppy Dixon "Miss Poppy" (Hollywood, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World (Paperback)

The first time I picked up this book I got to the part about menstruation being the inspiration for chairs, and like another reviewer here, thought Grahn's ideas way out there and put the book aside. Fast forward five years and it makes a lot more sense to me. Grahn is a poet and relates a world before there was language, when what would become humans lived in trees and struggled day to day along side the other animals. Grahn posits that the correlation of the female menstrual cycle with the cycle of the moon served as the first physical distinction between animal and environment, and provided the metaphorical correlation necessary to all language. Lacan describes this as the mirror stage which happens in infancy. What Grahn describes is similar but takes place not with an individual but with an entire race, haltingly, and over a very long period of time.

None of us knows what happened in the dawning of human consciousness. Grahan weaves a credible account based on commonalities between ancient cultures, myths, and language. Still, her narrative departs so acutely from what we generally do, or or have not bothered to, imagine about our origins that it seems very easy to dismiss. Yet in a country where 45% of the people believe God created the world in seven days, made the first man out of dust, and the first woman out of one of his ribs, why is Grahn's version - based on the physically possible - so difficult to consider?

Much of what Grahn writes is speculation, a delving into the possible. The stories of women have been, throughout history, suppressed, stolen, and destroyed. We cannot totally recreate this lost history, but we can try on other ideas and take from them the value that they hold. For women to consider that their lives and their bodies were integral to the creation of human culture is no more absurd than the completely unsubstantiated idea (which 45% of Americans believe) that ONLY the lives and bodies of men were necessary to human culture - that a male god spoke the whole kit and caboodle into being in seven days, and women were just an afterthought.

So Judy, you go, girl. And please do write a book on menopause.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars wonderful, April 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World (Paperback)

I highly recomend this book. It is a cultural history to beat all other cultural histories! Grahn has taken humanity back to the very earliest days and suggests that it was menstruation that caused us to develop into humans. I am hoping that Grahn will "complete the cycle" by writing about menopause, because it also had a profound effect on the development of humanity. No more cavemen stereotypes, please!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life-changing, December 30, 2005

By 

Pam Kolb (Napa, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World (Paperback)

Dr. Grahn's book was way ahead of its time. Both thought-provoking and transformational, she gives us nothing less than a new origin story in which women are at the center, without relegating men to the fringe. I highly recommend this book as well as the New College of California journal Metaformia: A Journal of Menstruation and Culture, www.metaformia.com. Page One describes how this theory returns women to a crucial place in cultural origin stories, in our histories, in our rituals, in our religions, and in the ordinary and extraordinary everyday things that billions of women do all over the planet-so women can again identify themselves as being part of culture creation in major, leading, and centralizing ways.