Woman Study

The summer Lisa A. Phillips turned 30, she fell in love with someone who didn't return her feelings. She soon became obsessed. She followed him around, called him compulsively, and talked about him endlessly. One desperate morning, after she snuck into his apartment building, he picked up a baseball bat to protect himself and began to dial 911. Her unrequited love had changed her from a sane, conscientious college teacher and radio reporter into someone she barely recognized.

The Vagina Monologues is a moving, poignant and often hilarious play, which celebrates female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery. Originally drawn from a collection of interviews conducted by Eve Ensler, the Obie Award-winning play gives voice to some of the most intimate, rarely shared fantasies and fears of women from all walks of life.

Venus and Aphrodite brings together ancient art, mythology, and archaeological revelations to tell the story of human desire. From Mesopotamia to modern-day London, from Botticelli to Beyoncé, Hughes explains why this immortal goddess continues to entrance us today - and how we trivialize her power at our peril.

Holding the Line, Barbara Kingsolver's first nonfiction book, is the story of women's lives transformed by an a signal event. Set in the small mining towns of Arizona, it is part oral history and part social criticism, exploring the process of empowerment that occurs when people work together as a community. Like Kingsolver's award-winning novels, Holding the Line is a beautifully written book grounded on the strength of its characters.

In 2021, Australia saw rage and revelation as #MeToo powered an insurgency against sexism and sexual violence. From once isolated survivors to political staffers, women everywhere were refusing to keep men’s secrets. In this electrifying essay, Jess Hill traces the conditions that gave birth to #MeToo and tells the stories of women who – often at great personal cost – found themselves at the centre of this movement. Hill exposes the networks of backlash against them – in government, media, schools and in our national psyche.

Upper-middle-class White women have long been heralded as “experts” on feminism. They have presided over multinational feminist organizations and written much of what we consider the feminist canon, espousing sexual liberation and satisfaction, LGBTQ inclusion, and racial solidarity, all while branding the language of the movement itself in whiteness and speaking over Black and Brown women in an effort to uphold privilege and perceived cultural superiority.

Highly acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin lends a resonant voice to a pivotal yet often overlooked character of Vergil's The Aeneid. Born into peace and freedom, Lavinia is stunned to learn that she will be the cause of a great war - or so the prophecies and omens claim. Her fate is sealed, however, when she meets a man from Troy.

Collapse has become the framework through which we write, debate, theorise, and, therefore, make society. It establishes a fertile ground for the development of conservative ideas in mainstream discourse since, in times of fear, people are more likely to turn in on themselves, their families, and look back for answers.

On a moonless night in the summer of 1793 a crime was committed in the back room of a New York brothel—the kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer did what virtually no one in US history had done before: she charged a gentleman with rape. Her accusation sparked a raw courtroom drama and a relentless struggle for vindication that threatened both Lanah’s and her assailant’s lives.

A call to arms, How to Build a Better Life will ignite a much-needed debate about the misplaced priorities of the modern generation. This guide is the antidote women need to reject the lies they've been fed by our culture so they can build the happier and slower-paced lives they crave.

Crystalline, witty, and audacious, The Cost of Living addresses itself to the dual experiences of writing and of womanhood, examining what is essential in each. Following the acclaimed Things I Don't Want to Know, which reflected deeply on the nature of gender politics and a life in letters, The Cost of Living returns to the same subject and to the same life, to find a writer in radical flux. If a woman dismantles her life, expands it and puts it back together in a new shape, how might she describe this new composition?

According to the Washington Post, no one who cares about contemporary African-American cultures can ignore Bell Hooks's electrifying feminist explorations. Targeting cultural icons as diverse as Madonna and Spike Lee, Outlaw Culture presents a collection of essays that pulls no punches. As Hooks herself notes, interrogations of popular culture can be a "powerful site for intervention, challenge and change." And intervene, challenge, and change is what hooks does best.

The phenomenal impact of The Prayer of Jabez is shown by reports of changed lives, expanded ministries, and spiritual breakthroughs among believers everywhere. Now women have their own unique version, shared by Bruce Wilkinson's lifetime partner in marriage, which is full of significance for women's roles and ministry opportunities in God's kingdom.

This edition brings together some of Ephron’s most famous writing on a generation of women (and men) who helped shape the way we live now, and on events ranging from the Watergate scandal to the Pillsbury Bake-Off. In these sharp, hilariously entertaining, and vividly observed pieces, Ephron illuminates an era with wicked honesty and insight. From the famous "A Few Words About Breasts" to important pieces on her time working for the New York Post and Gourmet Magazine, these essays show Ephron at her very best.

Every woman knows it's easy to lose sight of the heavenly power of God at work in our lives during times of hardship, exhaustion, stress, and change. But no matter the situation - whether it's our health, marriage, finances, family, or vocation - God has equipped all women with the power and influence to live freely and confidently. With warmth and a welcoming style, speaker and award-winning writer LaTan Roland Murphy illuminates 11 courageous women in the Bible and shows how each was uniquely positioned for success because of her courageous choices.

Welcome to the troubling age of sex denialism - the age of gender-neutral labels, rigidly enforced equality, unisex spaces, and the systematic eradication of sexual difference. In her debut book, Sex Scandal, journalist Ashley McGuire investigates the alarming nationwide push to ignore the natural, biological distinctions between men and women that have been at the core of functioning human society since the dawn of time.

Welcome to Wherever We Are is a meditation on what we hold onto, what we let go of, how we remember others, and ultimately how we're remembered. Deborah Cohan shares her story of caring for her father, a man who was simultaneously loud, gentle, loving, and cruel and whose brilliant career as an advertising executive included creating slogans like "Hey, how 'bout a nice Hawaiian punch?"

Tracy Clark-Flory grew up wedged between fizzy declarations of "girl power" and the sexualized mandates of pop culture. It was "broken glass ceilings" and Girls Gone Wild infomercials. With a vague aim toward sexual empowerment, she set out to become what men wanted - or, at least, understand it. In her moving, fresh, and darkly humorous memoir, she shares the thrilling and heartbreaking events that led to discovering conflicting truths about her own desire, first as a woman coming of age and then as a veteran journalist covering the sex beat.

With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope. Deeply felt, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential listening for every global citizen.

These 75 flash nonfiction pieces, written by internationally celebrated women authors and dazzlingly hilarious newcomers, are no flashes in the pan: They provide a feast of insights, generously garnished with wit, spice, and an exhilarating attention to craft. In Fast Funny Women, you'll find everything you want from thoughtful essays in a short, delicious form. Perfect for students of writing, writers of humor, and all fans who welcome laughter, insight, and perspective into their lives.