A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer
Author, playwright and performer Ensler hosts a collection of new, personal and often powerful essays by celebrities (Kathy Najimy, Jane Fonda), literati (Dave Eggers, Edwidge Danticat) and feminist luminaries (Carol Gilligan, Alice Walker). Ensler made her taboo-breaking reputation with her stage production The Vagina Monologues; here, she continues in that spirit, calling violence against women "an issue that lives smack in the middle of the world and is still not spoken, not seen, not given weight or significance." Ensler looks to figures such as Maya Angelou, Edward Albee and Anna Deavere Smith to jolt readers out of passivity and into the thick of the issue; in the first three essays, Howard Zinn relates his father's terririble moment of violence against Zinn's mother; Betty Gale Tyson reports on a life of abuse capped by a wrongful murder conviction; and Mollie Doyle contributes a poem about the camp counselor who forced a very adult kiss on her at age six. Some of the essays carry more weight than others, and most run no longer than two pages, but the book's power lies in their combined effect, layering the subtle and frightening ways violence has been and continues to be perpetrated against women. Gleaned from a two week New York festival, "Until the Violence Stops," the proceeds from this call to action will benefit Ensler's awareness-raising V-Day movement.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.