Reviewed in Ms. mag, Spring 2011

"Though women have had varying degrees of influence in many societies, no society has ever been found in which women have held political and legal power and men have not. In her new book, Gentlemen and Amazons, she traces the fictitious belief from its origins in Greek myth about Amazon warriors through the speculations of 19th-century historians and anthropologists, and the lasting effect of those speculations. . . . Not surprisingly, the idea that universal matriarchy existed remains a powerful theme in popular culture and neo-pagan religion, as well as in some leftist and feminist circles. Perhaps imagining that women once ruled over men helps defend against the fear that the opposite will always be true. As Eller notes, 'Feminists have found in matriarchal myth license to hope that just as male dominance had a beginning in ancient times, it can have an end too.'"

Reviewed in Ms. mag, Spring 2011

"Lorene Cary doesn't shy away from telling complicated stories about race in the United States. . . . she distill[s] taboo topics into moving and accessible works of literature. She does it again with her latest novel. In If Sons, Then Heirs, Cary examines race and racism through the prism of land ownership in the South. We learn how three generations of an African American family are affected by property purchased by the family patriarch, the aptly named King Needham, and how holding on to that land through some of the most violent and racially charged periods of American history brings them a fair share of power, privilege and pain. . . . The novel is epic in scope . . . with a heavy nod toward the injustice of property laws that could ignore a woman's stewardship of the land, her decades-long struggle to pay taxes. 'Nobody helped her cut the wheat or grind the flour or bake the bread,' Rayne says of Selma, who carried the burden of the family's inheritance alone, or nearly so, for more than half a century."

Reviewed in Curve magazine, May 2011

"Lea DeLaria, the woman behind the selection of stories in Best Lesbian Erotica 2011, seems to approach this collection with two things in mind: Don't take sex too seriously and make sure everyone's titilated. . . . DeLaria has taken her keen eye and turned it on our bedrooms, selecting erotica that is sexy, well-crafted and diverse. What one expects in a 'Best Of' collection, above all, is inclusivity. It is here that this collection succeeds. . . . This is a solid collection from one of our favorite queer publishing houses [Cleis Press], and a must for your erotic shelf."

Reviewed in Bust, Aug/Sept 2010

". . . Andrews, a successful political journalist, explores the difficulties of trying to attain success, both professional and personal. As the beneficiaries of the feminist movement and the black civil-rights movement, Andrews and her friends find themselves in a position their mothers and grandmothers had not deemed possible—financially independent, well educated, and professionally successful—but the men have not kept up. In her opening essay, Andrews details a mind-gamey instant messaging session with an on-and-off boyfriend, which leads her into a compelling analysis, replete with country-wide stats, on the complications of looking for a husband. 'While our women were snatching up college degrees and busting glass ceilings, our men were getting snatched up and busted,' she writes. Although the story of the professional single girl has been written before, Andrews' combination of personal anecdote and analysis of success and race makes her tales unique. And at the same time, her exploration of gender in America is one surely any woman can relate to."

Reviewed in Bust, Aug/Sept 2010

"If, as Andy Warhol said, 'buying is much more American than thinking,' them fashion journalist Avis Cardella is one of the most American women you'll ever meet. Her memoir Spent chronicles the escalation of her shopping addiction (oniomania, in clinical parlance) from shoplifting Lip Smackers in a Staten Island strip mall as a middle-schooler in the 1970s to five-figure binges at Barneys and Bergdorf's 20 years later. . . . Cardella succeeds overall with her riveting exploration of what happens when a woman gets everything she's ever wanted, only to find it's never enough. 'How can a woman with a closet so full feel so empty inside?' she asks herself. If the 'irrational exuberance' of the 1990s, in which the bulk of the book takes place, seems now as dated as fears of Y2K, Cardella's message is, of course, current: beware the toxic combination of rampant materialism and credit granted promiscuously. Spent powerfully underscores a lesson we've all come to painfully understand—the lure of 'more' can be a pretty potent drug."

Reviewed in Bust, Aug/Sept 2010

"There's always been sex in Hollywood, announces author Sam Wasson, 'but before Breakfast at Tiffany's, only the bad girls were having it.' Adapted from Truman Capote's novel, the Oscar-winning 1961 movie starring Audrey Hepburn as an independent girl about town made being a single woman look fantastic. (Also, the little black Givenchy dresses didn't hurt.) And in line with the best, engaging contemporary nonfiction, Wasson's account of the making of this film reads like fiction. Structured chronologically, the story begins with Capote's relationship with his mother, whose long absences provided early, sideways inspiration for Holly Golightly. It's a wonder the filmmakers succeeded in transforming Capote's sex-filled tale—complete with a gay best friend and an unhappy ending—into a movie that sings. Wasson weaves together the many limbs of filmmaking, from the beleaguered screenwriter, triumphant producers, composer, and lyricist to the then-little-known director Blake Edwards, who happens to be the subject of Wasson's first book, A Splurch in the Kisser. There's great drama, tension, and conflict in all these arenas, as well as in the on- and off-screen presence of the film's gamine star. Hepburn highlights include how she was discovered, vignettes from her fraught marriage, and her dogged pursuit of motherhood. Wasson's studied, fast-moving tale only gets better as the reader invests in his characters, understanding exactly how, why, and at what cost they devoted their energies to bringing this project to life."

Reviewed in Herizons, Summer 2010, vol. 24, no. 1

“. . . Smith clinched me with her essay on voice. In that essay, ‘Speaking in Tongues,’ she writes clear-heartedly on why people who have many locations that form them (and many other locations they choose) and are not mono-voiced, even if they have to be, at times, to enter particular discourses. Smith, the precocious British novelist, is herself multiply located.

She follows what she sees as the Henry James dictum—that you have to write and therefore experience as many nuances as possible, so that you and your reader are given the option of being ‘richly responsible.’ Richly responsible is not some dusty sense of duty, but is instead the reason for being, and for being simultaneously complicated and simple creatures in complex but clarified times. Smith also writes reassuringly of people who have to criss-cross borders almost constantly, including herself, U.S. President Barack Obama and Shakespeare.

Smith writes touchingly about her discovery of author Zora Neale Hurston and about how she refused to read her books at age 14, fearful that she would be tagged ‘Black and female,’ only later to realize that Hurston is simply a great writer, not Black and female—although that she is.

The rest of the essays, and there are 17 altogether, range from literary classics to screen icons Katherine Hepburn and Greta Garbo. In her essay on literary philosophers Vladimir Nabokov and Roland Barthes, Smith makes points that writers and readers will like: Nabokov basically says the writer is his or her own ideal reader—to read a writer well, one needs to read like they do. Barthes says the reader is supreme once the text is already published. Fundamentally, you can’t do without both locales or reading positions.

Best of all, Smith says that reading well is as much of an achievement as writing is.”

Reviewed in Herizons, Summer 2010, vol. 24, no. 1

“My favourite Alexandra Leggat story doesn’t appear in this collection, though it, too, is about an animal of sorts. In 'Impala,' from her second collection Meet Me in the Parking Lot, a man ostensibly mourns a car, and the last sentence spins the whole meaning of the story on a dime. In her aptly titled third collection, she displays that same skill with plot, although here the animals are mostly sinew and bone. . . .

Leggat’s prose style tends to be elliptical and clipped. In the last story, which seems intentionally cheerful and assured, the language often has a somber tone: ‘The doctor writes in his notebook. I don’t even care what he’s writing. I’m not the insecure one. I look out the window at the half-lit sky. Rain spits against the window.’

Most short story collections are up and down. Unlike most, however, Animal is more than the sum of its parts. Without linking any of the stories through character, or place, or plot, Leggat is able to build upon and echo them through one another.”

Reviewed in Herizons, Summer 2010, vol. 24, no. 1

“It is exciting to be able to add Back and Forth to the catalogue of contemporary women’s stories being told through pictures. . . . Chudolinska’s wordless graphic novel depicts a sensual picture of a young woman travelling in her mind between two periods of life, experienced in two visually distinct Canadian locations—Vancouver and Toronto. The story is told in 90 linocuts that use naturescapes and cityscapes to induce a primarily emotional narrative.

The protagonist moves back and forth through dimensions. In one, she wanders the naturally lush city of Vancouver in solitude. In a second realm, which takes place in a Toronto consciousness, Chudolinska depicts a relationship with a male romantic partner who becomes abusive. This psychological territory is marked by iconic city views that seem to jump into the characters’ sightlines, asking readers to feel the story through the landscape instead of the plot.

Chudolinska is one of the few female storytellers to experiment with the wordless graphic novel form. . . .”

Reviewed in Ms., Summer 2010, Great Reads for Summer 2010

"The author of the bestselling The History of Love tracks the ownership of a mysterious desk. Passing through the possession of writers and thinkers haunted variously by Pinochet's regime and the legacy of World War II, the desk survives even as its owners struggle to reconcile the present with past trauma."

Reviewed in VenusZine, Summer 2010

"Karen Carpenter saw herself first and foremost as a drummer. The discovery of her haunting voice was considered more of an 'accident' by her family who believed their son Richard to be the musical genius. It was Richard, not Karen, that inspired the clan to move from New Haven, Connecticut to California in 1963, where the two would gradually find success as a duo. In Little Girl Blue, Schmidt traces the life of the radiant young singer, recounting both her rise to fame and perfectionist tendencies. It's the first biography the Carpenter family didn't edit—and the author illustrates Karen's warmth, sensitivity, and sadly, her untimely and tragic death from anorexia nervosa."

Reviewed in VenusZine, Summer 2010

". . . The writer portrays a wide array of characters who are beaten up, in one way or another. The book is grounded in the interwoven stories of Bennie, a former punk rocker, and his assistant Sasha. Egan describes their histories before their paths cross and their futures, spanning the globe from Africa to New York. It's about the wilds of human connection and coincidences, and how two random people meet and change each other's lives irrevocably in big and small ways. . . ."

Reviewed in VenusZine, Summer 2010

"Anna Quindlen's latest novel paints a bucolic picture of modern domestic life, told through the eyes of a mother burdened by drama. The story's first half beautifully describes characters whose quirks seem foreboding only in hindsight: the besotted high school boyfriend; the recovering anorexic; and the troubled twin who fades into the shadow of his star athlete brother. A revelation near the middle turns the family on its head—and will wrench your heart."

Reviewed in Bust Magazine, June/July 2010

"Nothing happens in Molly Fox's Birthday. The plot is entirely uneventful, charting a day in the life of the narrator, a celebrated playwright, who is staying in Dublin at the home of her best friend, the Molly Fox of the title. The narrator wanders around the house, eats meals, takes a walk in town, and is visited by three unexpected, but by no means shocking, guests. It is the very lack of excitement that gives the narrator the time to reflect, and those reflections are the real stuff and substance of the book. Her two main preoccupations are her relationships, with Molly and Andrew, her other closest friend, and her work. She is beginning a new play and turning over in her mind all her thoughts about art and nature, the need for the theater, the danger and value of theater's two-faced quality of dissembling and truth. A certain graceful restraint permeates the short work, including its modest length. Though this is a novel of ideas, it does not expound, but collects small anecdotes and observations that elucidate the issue, often providing more questions than answers, and is content with its own ambiguity. Molly Fox's Birthday, which was a finalist for the Orange Prize last year and is being newly reissued by Picador in the U.S., is an invitation to contemplation. Madden's sympathetic characters have a complexity that gives them real weight and pathos, so that their ideas about he relationship between art and life, between artifice and nature, are engrossing enough to sustain vivid interest even in the utter absence of plot."

Reviewed in Bust Magazine, June/July 2010

"Paralyzed with fear after an abusive relationship and nearly 30 with no accomplishments, artist Belle Yang feels like a failure. She moves back home to practice calligraphy and recoup, but she finds it hard to identify with her immigrant parents' traditional ways. Her father is prone to a bad temper and blames his daughter for the way her life has turned out; likewise, Yang feels suffocated by her father's high expectations. Seeking a distraction, she begins to ask questions about her father's family in Manchuria, and soon finds herself writing and illustrating his stories. Yang's father's tale begins with his father and his father's three brothers, four men born into a prosperous family whose closeness becomes threatened by war, famine, and Communist oppression during World War II. . . . the ancestral tale portion of the book develops into a fascinating read in the vein of Persepolis. Charmingly illustrated with black-and-white ink drawings, this graphic memoir explores a tumultuous time in China's recent history."

Reviewed in Bust Magazine, June/July 2010

"Yale's first black female history professor, Jennifer Baszile, came of age in the not-quite-integrated suburbs of Southern California. Her account of that era in this riveting, fast-paced memoir is noteworthy for her clear-eyed perspective and honesty; in Baszile, the reader finds an all-cards-on-the-table narrator to root for as she navigates the ins and outs of growing up in an affluent, white enclave in the late 1970s and early '80s. Her mother and father, from Detroit and rural Louisiana, respectively, relocated to Palos Verdes as a means to give their two daughters—the only blacks at their school—a first-rate education. And while Baszile does well enough academically, she has a harder time fitting in, either at school dances or in the social setting of the Black Heritage Association, a group her parents co-founded to give their daughters a 'richer sense of black culture and black pride.' In one of her slyly funny asides, Baszile writes that she also suspected they feared she wouldn't date black kids unless they intervened: '[t]hey should have called it the Black Hormone Association.' Her accounts of several overt, aggressive instances of racism are painful but objective. At the heart of Baszile's debut lies her volatile relationship with her father, who, she concludes, maybe 'finally understood that integration had been as hard on me as segregation had been on him.' The family consistently projected an image of perfection, but Baszile's rendering of her upbringing reveals the hidden tension, as well as how she grew to be comfortable and happy in her own skin."

Reviewed in Bust Magazine, June/July 2010

"When Hilary Thayer Hamann self-published Anthropology of an American Girl in 2003, she achieved an inordinate amount of success for any novel, let alone a self-published one. Now Random House is publishing a revised version of the visionary work. The story centers on Eveline, an introspective high-school girl in East Hampton at the end of the 1970s, trying to make sense of both her gender and sexuality while finding her artistic voice. Through each of the men she attaches herself to, Eveline's sense of her sexuality changes and deepens. There is Jack, her off-kilter boyfriend who helps her through the trauma of being raped by two of her male classmates; Rourke, her high-school drama teacher turned prize fighter; and the cold and soulless Mark, who attempts to buy her love through constant luxuries and gifts.

The true value of the story lies not in the plot or the characters, which, at face value, may not seem out of the ordinary, but rather in the rich, poetic language that beautifully renders Eveline's every thought and emotion as she makes the transition from girl to woman. Even at over 600 pages, Hamann's words never meander, and she successfully explores the formation and maturation of female sexuality. One cannot help but be moved by Eveline's attempt to turn her body into a means for euphoria and connection rather than abuse and manipulation."

Reviewed in Bitch Magazine, Summer 2010

"Parenting Out of Control is the perfect antidote to all those hyperbolic articles about overbearing, overprotective moms who hover, helicopter, and micromanage, grounded as it is in actual social-science research, nuanced analysis, and an eagerness to look beyond clichés. Author Margaret Nelson . . . interviewed some 93 families with teenage children across the United States, from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds, about their parenting practices and attitudes toward new technologies of surveillance. The result is a fascinating and sometimes surprising portrait of modern parenting.

Nelson divides her interview subjects into two rough socioeconomic groups that, it turns out, also correspond with two distinct parenting approaches. In a nutshell, professional middle- and upper-middle-class parents 'define the job of parenting in a particular way that demands engagement of themselves'; their parenting is, Nelson argues, 'out of control' in the sense of both being over-the-top and enacted in a tightly controlling fashion (albeit masked in the language of acceptance, trust, and self-exploration).

By contrast, other middle- and working-class parents perform what Nelson dubs 'parenting with limits': "They do not believe they need to be involved in making every decision about their children's lives,' and are most interested in teaching their children tools for self-sufficiency.

In the book's second half, Nelson explores how these different parenting styles affect attitudes toward new technologies like GPS devices and TV- and Web-content controls. . . .

Parenting Out of Control is full of astute tidbits, and while it doesn't exactly blow away the clichés of the helicopter parents, it does an excellent job of explaining what makes their rotors turns so fast, and why."

Reviewed in Bitch Magazine, Summer 2010

"'Where have all the interesting women gone?' demands the first line of this slim volume, kicking off a no-holds-barred polemic criticizing modern feminism for being 'about as radical as a diamante phone cover.' Author and academic Nina Power's aim is clear: to challenge 'the perky, upbeat message of self-fulfillment and consumer emancipation' which has, in her view, replaced genuine feminist discourse.

Power's chief target is capitalism, rather than feminism itself. She's impatient with the corporate workplace, where feminism is swept under the carpet . . .

The chapter titled 'Sarah Palin, or How Not to be a Feminist' identifies the contradiction embodied by the self-described maverick—that an anti-choice, retrogressive woman can successfully call herself a feminist without being sued for false advertising—but suggests that the terminology itself may be the problem. ('If feminism can mean anything from behaving like a man [to] being pro-life . . . and being pro-war, then we may need to simply abandon the term.') . . . Power is keen to confront the uncomfortable and unpalatable, a refreshing trait in a culture perpetually moving toward the anodyne. . ."

Reviewed in Bitch Magazine, Summer 2010

"For anyone tired of the dating-book genre and its glut of passivity-preaching, Julie Klausner's I Don't Care About Your Band is the antidote. Humor disguised as memoir, it celebrates Klausner's many failed romantic endeavors—most of which she happily chased against her better judgment—to hilarious effect. Her tales of heterosexual amour may be disastrous, but Klausner, a comedy writer and veteran Upright Citizens Brigade performer, has written them with such irreverent glee that they're strangely uplifting.

. . . Throughout, she sizes up this menagerie of awful suitors with Borscht Belt zingers, and provides some insights that, while note entirely new, are incisive. . . .

Klausner convincingly argues that it's more fun to stay home with a Broadway musical than waste time going to another narcissist's boring rock show. And the charm of I Don't Care About Your Band is that even as its heroine repeatedly falls on her face searching for love, she never once doubts herself or tries to be more passive or less funny. And neither, she argues, should anyone else."

Reviewed in Bitch Magazine, Summer 2010

"The Pill. In the universe of pharmaceuticals, it alone needs neither brand name nor description. As the nation's leading form of birth control, it has been used by a whopping 85 percent of women who have had heterosexual sex; it's also been lauded as a liberator of women and a catalyst of the sexual revolution. In 1993, the Economist even dubbed it one of the seven wonders of the modern world. But in America and the Pill, historian Elaine Tyler May tidily debunks perceptions of oral contraception as feminism's magic bullet, writing, 'The pill was not the pharmacological engine for any mega-transformations in our social, cultural, or political lives.' Instead, May argues, the Pill's impact had much to do with its timing; it entered women's private lives at a key moment in political and cultural change, enabling them to create their own 'mega-transformation.'

America and the Pill is a lean, captivating history, particularly when May contextualizes the Pill as a product of Cold War fears and sensibilities: Although pharmaceutical companies and the U.S. government considered contraceptives scandalous in 1950, the Pill was legitimized as a possible solution to global overpopulation, a hot-button issue fueled by racial and political anxieties. The Pill tapped into the era's unshakable faith in scientific progress and medical experts; Americans were confident it could reduce population, alleviate poverty around the world, and foster happy families at home. Of course, few of these promises were realized. The Pill neither stabilized the world nor stemmed the population crisis and its arrival in 1960 ushered in a decade of dissent rather than social order.

May is a skilled writer, and she weaves the book's abundant personal accounts of women's experiences with the Pill with discussion of governmental policies and historical records to create clear and legible scholarship. By the end of America and the Pill, I hadn't just learned about the Pill—I had a better sense of our nation's cultural history."

Reviewed by Curve Magazine, June 2010 Hammer!

"Hammer! is the first book written by experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer. A fundamental figure in 1970s lesbian feminism, Hammer continues to both produce films and teach film studies. In her long career, she has been responsible for many cinematic firsts. . . . This book collects essays she has written for film journals and feminist publications like Heresies and Sinister Wisdom, and personal narratives produced before the age of blogging or even before the Internet could make them widely available. Hammer is self-reflective, ironic, joyful and funny, capturing the eras she lived through as a feminist artist . . . . Kudos to editor Amy Scholder and the Feminist Press for recognizing the need for this book, and for producing it so artfully."

Reviewed in Curve Magazine, June 2010

Reviewed in Curve Magazine, June 2010

"A tale of four diverse girls (one has lesbian parents) who unite to bring down the popular mean girl. In the process, the girls discover friends for life. This charming story became the center of controversy when Scholastic Books didn't include it in their book fairs because the author refused to omit the same-sex couple."

Reviewed in Make/Shift magazine, Issue 7, Spring/Summer 2010 and Ms. Magazine, Winter 2010 

From Make/Shift:

". . . Rojas attempts to include the voices of as many women and communities of color as possible within the limited space of the book. While focusing the bulk of her analysis on Black and African American women, Rojas includes Chicana, Latina, Native American, and Asian American perspective and histories in each chapter. Sections within the chapters on the work of major theorists, from Stuart Hall's popular-culture theories to Maria Lugone's theory of world traveling, are well reasoned and clear, and Rojas has not cut corners. Rojas also addresses the complex issues for women of color surrounding reproductive rights, and is particularly effective when clarifying how histories of slavery and colonization continues to affect representations of Black women's sexuality."

From Ms.:

"Using examples from history, pop culture and the Internet, Rojas—a professor of women's, gender and sexuality studies—offers insight into the experience of being both feminist and racially 'othered.'"

Reviewed in Bust Magazine, April/May 2010

"Punk-rock poet Patti Smith's life story could probably fill a Proustian number of volumes. But in this slim, richly realized memoir, she focuses on 1967 to 1989—the years that spanned her friendship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, before his life was cut short by AIDS. Those familiar with the gay eroticism of Mapplethorpe's most notorious work may be surprised to learn that, in the early days of their relationship, the pair were lovers. Both new to New York City, rich in artistic dreams, and desperately low on cash, Mapplethorpe and Smith met by chance in their early 20s and instantly recognized each other as kindred spirits. In exquisitely detailed vignettes, Smith describes the tiny apartments they shared in Brooklyn, the heavy influence each had on the other's creative ambitions, and the sacrifices they made just to survive. . . . Through it all—despite Mapplethorpe's revelations about his sexuality, Smith's wanderlust, and the attention from admirers as both made their mark—the pair remained soul mates to the end. And it is their ceaseless devotion to one another that shines brightest in this book, even amid the sea of famous faces."

Reviewed in Bust Magazine, April/May 2010

". . . O'Farrell is an excellent storyteller who expertly evokes the sharp thrill of first love and the sleepless, besotted blur of new-motherhood. Though one or two plot twists might challenge our suspension of disbelief, they are made up for by the human believability of her characters and the quirky clarity with which she portrays mid-century London's modernist charms."

Reviewed in Ms. Magazine, Spring 2010, Great Reads for Spring 2010

"Why are U.S. mothers so pressed for time and money? Journalist Sharon Lerner sets aside such decoys as 'opt-out moms' and 'slacker dads' to examine the root of the problem: family-unfriendly U.S. policies."

Reviewed in Ms. Magazine, Spring 2010

Revieed in Ms. Magazine, Spring 2010, Great Reads for Spring 2010

Reviewed in Ms. Magazine, Spring 2010

Reviewed in Ms. Magazine, Spring 2010

"Over a long career as a scholar of international relations, Cynthia Enloe has been preoccupied with the query Where are the women? Without asking questions about gender, she warns, we can't get a complete picture of international politics. In Nimo's War, Emma's War, she uses the experiences of four Iraqi women and four American women as jumping-off points to examine the price women have paid (and continue to pay) in the Iraq War. Their stories help illustrate how gendered politics change over the course of a war and how this thing we call war itself changes over time. . . . Enloe's thesis [is] that women's endorsement is necessary for war to occur and continue. As in most wars, the women impacted by the Iraq War have remained largely invisible, either infantilized and disregarded or turned into symbols. Military commanders dismiss American women's accusations of rape by fellow soldiers; the wives of deployed National Guardsmen, left in desperate financial straits, turn to government food stamp programs. Meanwhile, Iraqi women provide serial images of helplessness, huddling together as American soldiers break down doors, shine strobe-strength lights and bark commands. 'Time after time in press photos, we see a girl in her nightclothes, looking stunned.' Enloe writes. "We hear nothing . . . from the girl, what she is thinking, what she later tells her friends, what she asks her mother, what she writes in her diary.' With Nimo's War, Emma's War, we begin to imagine."

Reviewed in Ms. Magazine, Spring 2010, Great Reads for Spring 2010

Reviewed in Bitch Magazine, no. 46, Spring 2010

". . . Castle possesses an undeniably sharp intellect, and these pieces reveal a great talent for constructing the personal essay. ('Travels with My Mother' wonderfully captures the mother-daughter dynamic in the least Hallmark-ish was possible.) She is particularly unflinching in her depictions of her almost unbelievable screwed up family—a dissection that would seem almost cruel if it weren't also accompanied by similarly devastating self-critique of her own foibles and neuroses. While Castle's descriptions of her dysfunctional affair with the professor are titillating indeed, it's her uncensored emotional and psychological confessions that are truly revealing."

Reviewed in Curve magazine, April 2010

"A young woman and her mother offer an intimate look at a family with eating disorders . . . And it's not just any mother and daughter—this pair includes a mom who's an award-winning food critic, and a daughter who changes from an enthusiastic eating companion to a secretive, troubled teenager suffering from both anorexia and bulimia. . . . Lisa's eating disorder developed slowing, starting with a predisposition to stockiness (despite being involved in many sports) and a childhood drenched in food and low self-esteem. Lisa's mom, Sheila, is accepting and nurturing, but like all parents, imperfect, and the frankness with which she admits her own faults is refreshing. As her parents begin to realize the extent to which the eating disorders have become entrenched in Lisa's life, the family dynamics implode. The dual voices in the book differ on some important points, including the availability of junk food in the house, the misread cries for help, even the way Lisa looked as a young teenager—her mother says she was 'never fat,' but Lisa insists she was. 'I'm not sure what I weighed, but it didn't matter because I felt fat.' So began many years of over-exercising, skipping meals, restricting foods, bulimia, and an obsession that consumed about 90 percent of her thoughts on any given day. As the family stumbles toward recovery, the book winds down with mother and daughter (Lisa is now in her early 20s) expressing hope for the future. There may be a bumpy road ahead, but the mere fact of Lisa's survival, and the revelation that healing is possible, will provide comfort for many families on the same path."

Reviewed in Curve Magazine, April 2010

"With works by Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Daisy Zamora, and other feminist literary leaders, this collection of poems, short stories and memoirs eloquently explores sibling love, adoration and rivalry. Read it with your sister and the two of you will be practicing your secret language again and arguing about that shirt she borrowed and never returned. Ah, sisters!"

Reviewed in Ms. Magazine, Winter 2010

"Louise Erdrich has crafted a harrowing novel of fire and ice, with love and violence, exhilaration and terror, and the warm security of family rituals alternating unpredictably with chilling outbursts of emotional and physical violence. Shadow Tag's form and content make for disturbing polarities: Erdrich imposes her exquisite mastery of language, imagery and literary form upon the raw and brutal chaos of mental illness, alcohol abuse and domestic violence. Unlike the rich orchestrations of much of her previous fiction, with its expansive explorations of history, storytelling and social communities, Shadow Tag is chamber music in a minor key: two parents and three children, a family in free fall over the course of one Minnesota winter. . . . Gill manipulates the family through his charisma and their fear. Irene, more likely to be focusing on a wineglass than her unfinished dissertation, seems incapable of leaving her husband or standing up for her children's safety. . . . Where Shadow Tag commands a tragic universe is in its heartbreakingly empathetic portrayal of three innocent victims: Florian, 13; Riel, 11; and 6-year-old Stoney. The children are painted with warmth, tenderness and an unsparing understanding of what their parents have done to them."

Reviewed in Ms. Magazine, Winter 2010

"Given its depressing topic—the media's insidious contribution to the waning influence of feminism—Enlightened Sexism is a delightful read. Douglas had me laughing out loud as she made her irreverent but persuasive case against a popular culture that promises girls and women they can be whatever they want as long as they don't want the wrong things. . . . By provoking us to laugh, Douglas teaches us to resist. Her book is a powerful booster shot meant to keep us thinking critically about how television, movies, ads and popular culture depict the lives and desire of girls and women."