In her insightful debut book, Mary Pierce Brosmer shares the unique method of writing that she developed as founder and director of Women Writing for (a) Change, a nationwide organization that teaches women and girls to nurture the conscious feminine voice within them. Imaginative exercises, helpful examples, and provocative anecdotes enable women to explore their writing not just as a means of individual self-examination and expression, but also as a way to create and effect positive social change.
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"An invitation for us to personally explore, through writing, the author's belief `in the power of language, truth-telling and stories as instruments of healing.' This book is a true instrument of healing for women, our children and our disconnected society." --Margaret J. Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science and Turning to One Another
"Women Writing for (a) Change is a wonderful book full of insight and clarity. It supports us in our efforts to write and to be, with honesty and acceptance as writers and as human beings. This is a book to be read many times over."
"Women Writing for (a) Change is a wonderful book full of insight and clarity. It supports us in our efforts to write and to be, with honesty and acceptance as writers and as human beings. This is a book to be read many times over."
Review
"Women Writing for (a) Change is a wonderful book full of insight and clarity. It supports us in our efforts to write and to be, with honesty and acceptance as writers and as human beings. This is a book to be read many times over."
"Women Writing for (a) Change is a wonderful book full of insight and clarity. It supports us in our efforts to write and to be, with honesty and acceptance as writers and as human beings. This is a book to be read many times over."
"Women Writing for (a) Change is a wonderful book full of insight and clarity. It supports us in our efforts to write and to be, with honesty and acceptance as writers and as human beings. This is a book to be read many times over."
"Women Writing for (a) Change is a wonderful book full of insight and clarity. It supports us in our efforts to write and to be, with honesty and acceptance as writers and as human beings. This is a book to be read many times over."
"Women Writing for (a) Change is a wonderful book full of insight and clarity. It supports us in our efforts to write and to be, with honesty and acceptance as writers and as human beings. This is a book to be read many times over."
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Only a small portion of the book devoted to helpful writing exercises,
This review is from: Women Writing for (a) Change: A Guide for Creative Transformation (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Perhaps I should have more closely read the other reviews before agreeing to review this book myself. As a psychologist, I had been hoping that author Mary Pierce Brosmer's work with women writers would provide me with ideas for writing exercises that I could use with my clients. Unfortunately, I found only to be a small portion of the book to be potentially useful in this area.
Let me explain. Women Writing for (a) Change, or WWf(a)C (does anyone other than me find this to be extremely awkward terminology?) is a concept founded by poet and teacher Pierce. What started out as a small writing group eventually went on to become many different entities, including a school, a radio program, a foundation, and a consulting group. In Part I of this book, Foundational Stories, Pierce reviews the development of WWf(a)C, sharing the connections to her own childhood by weaving in her poems, dreams, and journal entries. Part 2, Groundwork, continues to tell the story of WWf(a)C, but here the focus is on the writing classes themselves, addressing topics such as rituals, class agendas, and "soul cards." Pierce also provides examples of how to share writing within the small group setting (i.e., read-arounds). Parts 1 and 2 do include brief, reflective-type exercises at the end of each chapter. Here is one example: "Write about listening and being listened to in you a) family of origin, b) current family or friendship circle, c) workplace." Part 3 is what I would consider to be the heart of the book. The theme here is "Change Writing," and this is where Pierce finally begins to offer more specific writing exercises. Many of these instruct the reader to set a timer for a certain period and then to respond to a prompt. For example: "Set the timer for five minutes and write: I remember...I remember..." Pierce defines the exercises in this section as either "personal writing practices," which are designed to be performed alone, or "connection practices," which include the involvement of others--one of these, meant to be used with colleagues, involves asking each person in the group to write a story a day for five days. The final section of the book is titled Conscious Feminine Leadership. Here Pierce directs her attention to caring for all aspects of the organization; in her introduction, she says this is "not for the faint of heart." Pierce includes some Appendices in the book as well, but I saw little use to these, other than perhaps the Sample Class Agendas, which might be helpful to someone looking to hold a similar writing class or workshop to what is described in the book. In summary, although this book is well-written and clearly heartfelt, overall, I feel that it has somewhat limited utility. I believe that it would be most useful for those engaged in teaching exploratory writing courses, perhaps college professors or others who incorporate read-arounds as part of their teaching. I think that this book will probably be less useful to individuals who are looking for ideas to stimulate their own writing, although those who do pick up the book for that reason may derive some benefit from skipping directly to Part 3, an option which Pierce herself offers in her Introduction.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Creative transformation - change through art...,
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This review is from: Women Writing for (a) Change: A Guide for Creative Transformation (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Women Writing for (a) Change: A Guide for Creative Transformation is a much needed resource for the female writer - I wish I had known about the workshops and community that Mary Pierce Brosmer had laid the foundations for. It would be a much safer environment for those moments when we face hard truths or need a nurturing word. Based on her nationwide organization that teaches women and girls to nurture the conscious feminine voice within them.
Through the use of exercise and example Brosmer leads you on a pathway of exploration..."not just as a means of individual self-examination and expression, but also as a way to create and effect positive social change." The exercises run from the intimately complex to the sublimely simple - my favorite is: "Write Now: Take your calendar or day planner, and commit to a series of regular writing appointments with yourself. Keep them." As women writers our stories are sometimes similar, but told from a different viewpoint and set of life experiences - I like the poem Brosmer quotes by Lisel Muller: "Why We Tell Stories Because the story of our life Becomes our life Because each of us tells the same story but tells it differently and none of us tells it the same way twice." Destined to fill in the shelf of every woman writer...mine sits between The Artist's Way and Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Women Believing in the Possibility of their Own Writing,
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This review is from: Women Writing for (a) Change: A Guide for Creative Transformation (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
As someone who runs a writing prompt community, I was more interested in the actual prompts that Ms. Mary Pierce Brosmer had in this book. I was fairly impressed with the structure of the book as it was not only intended to be an exercise in getting women to think about feminist writing and learning their own voices, but also exorcising those exeriences that have been traumatic in ideally a community-type of setting. I found Chapter 6 which deals with Rituals to be of particular interest. We create rituals around creativity and give sacred space to those parts of ourselves that we seek to honour in the self and each other. Of course, not every woman has the luxury of being around other women or having access to such groups, but Mary Pierce Brosmer does make it possible for the reader to gain that experience through "Women Writing for (a) Change". I could see this book being used quite easily and effectively in a University or College level Feminist literature and writing class. Being woman who does not actively seek out feminist writing, I found this to be a very fresh approach to an genre that is all too often excessively angry and quite frankly dysfunctional. This book is neither of these things and really does seek to empower women - anyone realy, through the writing process.
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