Customer Reviews

From Outrage to Courage: Women Taking Action for Health and Justice

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This is a beautifully written account of the issues and challenges women throughout the world face to redress inadequate health care, educational deficiencies, cultural biases, poverty, underemployment, domestic violence, victimization during war, and age discrimination. Most important, with determined compassion, it makes the often invisibility of these issues visible and specific. The very first chapter gracefully introduces the reader to the notion that health care is a human right; and that we cannot separate human rights from women's rights.

"From Outrage to Courage" is not a weighty, dreary polemical tome. It is a warmly written, feisty, sensitive and insightful page turner, replete with heart stopping case studies and stories supported by clear documentation. Each chapter opens with a moving poem. The book also describes the innovative activities women, from youth to old age, are employing with optimism, courage, strength and effective networking (often on a global level) to improve their own lives.

This book is a must read for everyone, men and women, interested in humanitarian issues, global health care, multi-disciplinary approaches to resolving world problems, and women's studies.

It also makes a great book club book, and Oprah, among others, should promote it. Author Anne Murray is founder of the Global Fund for Women and teaches at Stanford. She has the credentials and demonstrated vision to write a remarkable book and call for action.

I loved this book and would welcome the thoughts of others.

"From Outrage to Courage" is a book not to be placed on the shelf, but rather one to be read and discussed by citizens of all ages and backgrounds. Anne Firth Murray's writing inspires both women and men, teachers and students to confront the outrageous reality of the inequalities some women face all over the world today. Her tone is honest and wise, appropriately critical yet endlessly compassionate.

Each chapter starts with a carefully selected poem presenting the often timeless struggle that women have faced demanding gender equality, human rights representation, appropriate health care, and education. In the text, each issue is presented both inspiring the outrage that injustices demand as well as showing the courage some women have found to stand up and face these injustices through specific activism and the development of wonderful organizations all over the world.

Reading Ann Firth Murray's testament to "women taking action for health and justice" inspires us all to stand up from the everyday-ness of our lives and be willing to work towards change. "From Outrage to Courage" is full of hope that, although staggering inequalities for women continue to be present everyday, though the courage of individual women to act on the small scale, systemic change can be made.

"From Outrage to Courage" is a remarkable book that should be a must-read for all of us. Beautifully written and extremely well-researched, Anne Firth Murray takes you on a journey into the challenges and inequalities faced by women throughout our world. This book is filled with many important facts and figures, providing a specific context within which we can better understand the enormity of this situation. One of my favorite aspects of the book is the way in which Anne is able to weave in personal stories of women with whom she has met and spoken. These examples provide an identity and a face for the millions of women and girls living in oppressive, violent, and unequal situations.

It is impossible to read this book and not become emotionally invested. However, though much of the information is horrifying, the overall feel of "From Outrage to Courage" is that of hope and perseverance. Every chapter contains information about specific groups throughout the world that are working to combat the challenges discussed. You finish this book with the understanding that we can all do something to help, no matter how small or how large our gestures may seem.

I truly loved "From Outrage to Courage", and I will be sharing it with as many people as possible!

From Outrage to Courage: Women Taking Action for Health and Justice

Anne Firth Murray's lastest book, From Outrage to Courage, is a comprehensively researched work that examines critical issues of global health and justice concerning woman. The book reflects a lifetime of action and research by one of the world's leading activists in the area of health and women's rights, and is a clarion and inspriring call for action with its probative analysis and compelling presentation. I recommend this book highly.

As a practitioner in the field of global women's health, this book is a constant source of facts, stories and inspiration. This book provides readers with a rich and textured framework within which to understand where we, as a global community, stand today in terms of the status of women and the profound impact that women's health and wellbeing has on the world. I highly recommend this book to students, clinicians, researchers, curious minds, advocates and anyone else who wants to be more informed about the reality of the lives of women throughout the world and how we as informed citizens can play a role in shaping the next generation.

Anne Firth Murray has created a marvelous and engaging text for anyone who is teaching about women's health, global health issues, or just the issue of how social change happens. I have used this book in my own women's health advocacy course at Suffolk University, and the students all loved it. They were especially inspired by the examples of how women across the world are working to improve their lives. --Judy Norsigian, Executive Director, Our Bodies Ourselves

As someone who has given lectures in the area of global health and women, I found this book a tremendous contribution to understanding how poverty and gender inequity contribute to the starting line of the anne firth murray's prologue- "being born female is dangerous to your health." She takes you through the cycles of life,--birth, childhood, adolescence, midlife and aging and walks you through all the preferential demographic imbalances and injustices that can occur to vulnerable women. I will use this book often as a reference and an assigned mandatory reading for my classes in global health. I hope to meet the author one day soon and thank her.
Michele Barry
Professor of Medicine and Global Health
Yale University

Occasionally a truly inspiring work comes along. Anne Firth Murray's, From Outrage to Courage, Women Taking Action for Health and Justice is such a book. In spite of the rigorously documented grim state of women's health worldwide, this comprehensive book offers hope that things are changing in powerful ways. Readers will be inspired to contribute to the positive change being achieved by the multitude of organizations profiled on nearly every page. These women are doing something about the injustice.

Tracing the stages of life we all go through from birth to aging, each chapter is a powerful juxtaposition of outrage provoking description of where we are today with examples of the courage to confront it. Anyone in public policy, private philanthropy, or in just being more human will find this book helpful. I highly recommend it.

One of the best books ever read, and one I recommend to all who will listen.

At the end of a semester I often present the book as a gift to my students (Social Work graduate students - International Community Development track), because I know how helpful it will be as they proceed into the global arena.

This book is amazing, required text for a women's studies class focusing on international women's health issues. I prefer the other required text, Half the Sky, only because Outrage to Courage is a little more text-bookish, in that there are many stats thrown at you, and it seems a little less personal at times, but overall a very good book!