Lynn's Read and Re-read This Book To Explain Why She's So Compelled By It

I've been rereading an advance copy of Eve Ensler's new book, In The Body of the World , hoping to convey somehow why I found it so compelling a read.  Ensler is known mainly for her play, The Vagina Monologues, and for founding "V-Day", a global movement to end violence against women and girls, and possibly this month also for the global action, "One Billion Rising" on February 14, 2013.

Writing this memoir as she reflects on the aftermath of a truly horrific bout with uterine cancer, the deaths of her parents and her recent work with women in the Congo experiencing devastating violence in their communities, Eve glides seamlessly between the intensely personal and the globally political with the earthy, furious sort of howling riffs that make me think of poetry from authors like Carolyn Forche, Alan Ginsberg or Joy Harjo.  Diving headlong into a cathartic confrontation with the scariest elephants in both our intimately individual and societal living rooms is no mean feat, but Ensler pulls it off with the ordinary magic of a transformative revelation from a deeply trusted, funny, wise, complicated and very very simply human, but fiercely adventurous, sister or confidant.

--Lynn