The arresting title of science writer Natalie Angier's new book refers to woman's body, a terrain Angier explores with wit and wisdom. The book engages the reader in an exploration as different as those of Christopher Columbus and the Mars global surveyor. Angier treats women to a new image of what, from a woman's perspective, current medical and scientific research has to tell us about ourselves. Such examples serve college women as role models. I was especially taken with the research of Nancy Burley, a professor of evolution and ecology, whose experiments with birds are both original and thought-provoking.
Female finches exhibit interesting reactions to such sartorial innovations.
Angier addresses such controversial topics as clitoridtectomy and infibulation that raise the ire of Western feminists but appear to be treated with less animus in the societies where they are practiced, a point confirmed in conversations with students from West Africa in some of my classes. A valuable contribution to women's studies, Angier's work is unsettling in many respects because it challenges many of the long-standing assumptions about female development and female sexuality.