Customer Reviews

WOMEN IN THE TREES

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I found this book some years back while I was wandering through a bookstore and I was immediately drawn to it. As a Women's Studies major, I have always been interested in fictional representations of domestic violence and this book was just what I had always been looking for. It is actually one of the resources I have drawn on for my senior thesis and I cannot recommend it enough. My copy is a little worse for wear because I enjoy sharing it with every woman and man I know. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in how the representations of violence against women have and have not changed in our mother's and grandmother's lifetimes.

Susan Koppelman has created a marvelous and inspiring collection of women's stories about abuse and resistance.

Before each story. she includes a quote to elucidate the following piece. My favorite: "Some abusive people are adept at picking out a trait that a woman is most pleased about and using it against her...When an abused woman begins to doubt that she has that one special trait she has always felt secure about, the rest of her self-concept is quickly called into question." This quote, as well as many others, provide answers to the smug and uneducated who question how this could happen, and who might be the victims of cruelty and violence, both physical and emotional.

Koppelman has, through this varied collection, clearly shown us that there's no common profile of an abused woman. We could all be.

This book is a must read for everyone!

This extraordinary collection of fine women's stories collected and introduced by Susan Koppelman informs and reminds us of the widespread battering of women for over a century. And in the introductory notes prior to each story, Dr. Koppelman gives the reader extra information about the author and often about the times and conditions surrounding the depiction of abuse the woman, or women, suffer in each story. Still, every story left me feeling uplifted and proud to be a woman. What I found in these stories, over and over, is how little present day assumptions of entitlement held by abusive and battering men has changed! Batterers, then and now, assume they have the right to mistreat a woman or women as they do because they assume they are inherently superior and that they are preordained to do whatever they deem necessary to control and dominate women. These stories, however, tell us far more then the usual clinical 'case histories' of women victimized by men. These stories tell of courage, ingenuity and an almost super-human strength of spirit although some stories do tell of the eventual death of the battered women. As a woman, myself, who has found her own freedom from overbearing, abusive and cruel men...I am grateful to Dr. Koppelman for giving me and other women the collection of gems she has brought together in "Women in the Trees"! Other collections gathered together in other books edited by Susan Koppelman and introduced by her are equally remarkable and nurture the feminine spirit! I highly recommend "Women in the Trees" as well as her other books.

This anthology gives voice and face to the appalling statistics about domestic violence. Koppelman is an amazing editor, and has pulled together an array of short stories that are important and illuminating both individually and collectively. One of my favorites is Pat Staten's "The Day My Father Tried to Kill Us." I use it in my Intro to Gender and Women's Studies class to explore the enduring questions about battering: what causes the batterer to become violent? Why do people stay with partners who batter them? What are the effects on children of growing up witnessing and fearing violence? How does the larger social context make it difficult for people to extricate themselves from such dysfunctional family relationships? How does the violence of war invade and influence the dynamics of post-war family life?

For everyone who has ever been on the receiving end of violence at the hands of a partner, this book will bring the healing that comes from realizing your story is a shared one: you are not alone, and you are not the cause. For everyone who has ever passed easy judgment on a spouse or partner who "puts up with" a batterer, this book will, I hope, bring insight.

For anyone who enjoys compelling, thought-provoking, well-written literature, this book will deliver.