Customer Reviews

A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer

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I read this book at the gym and found that I really wished that I had a pack of tissue with me. Ensler's anthology is at times painful to read- the vignettes are harrowing and will leave the reader with a sense of sadness.

I found that I kept on leafing to the back of the book to read the contributors' bios. I wish that the bios were after each poem/essay. This book is not a sunny, fun read, but a heavy one.

The audience for this book is both a lay and academic audience. I would actually like to hear it on cd. I can't help but wonder if the pieces would be more powerful that way (much like the _Good Body_ is better on CD).

Overall, I think the anthology can educate people about the seemingly everyday wickedness concerning violence against women and girls. I think that some folks don't understand how pervasive violence is in our lives, yet we don't talk about it.

Kudos to Ensler for continuing to be such a great feminist artist, who uses her creative endeavors to educate.

I help to produce our college's production of _The Vagina Monologues_ every year. We love Eve Ensler's work, including _The Good Body_. This collection by several authors and edited by Eve Ensler is even better in some ways, because the many voices in this work speak for themselves. There are voices from many points of view, including men, and all of them speak about violence against women in some way. The inclusion of men is terrific. Every year we have to find alternative ways for the men in our college to participate in our production, and this always leads to discussion of inclusion. Well, here it is--and many of these writers, male and female are amazing. If there's a critique to mount against this work, I guess it would be that its very nature means that the pieces are generally negative--how could they be anything else, given the theme? There is some humor and some uplift, and I certainly don't want to suggest that you shouldn't read it, because you should. We eagerly await Eve's next project!