The Vagina Monologues - Softcover

V (formerly Eve Ensler)

3.87

36,668 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1860499260 ISBN 13: 9781860499265

Publisher: Virago Press Ltd., 2001

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I decided to talk to women about their vaginas, to do vagina interviews, which became vagina monologues ...At first women were reluctant to talk. They were a little shy. But once they got going, you couldn't stop them. Women secretly love to talk about their vaginas. They get very excited, mainly because no one's ever asked them before.' Eve Ensler A poignant and hilarious tour of the last frontier, the ultimate forbidden zone, THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES is a celebration of female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery. Hailed as the bible for a new generation of women, it has been performed in cities and colleges throughout the world, and has inspired a dynamic grassroots movement -- V-Day -- to stop violence against women. Witty and irreverent, compassionate and wise, Eve Ensler's award-winning masterpiece gives voice to real women's deepest fantasies and fears, guaranteeing that no one who reads it will ever look at a woman's body, or think of sex, in quite the same way again.

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Review:

"I say vagina because I want people to respond," says playwright Eve Ensler, creator of the hilarious, disturbing soliloquies in The Vagina Monologues, a book based on her one-woman play. And respond they do--with horror, anger, censure, and sparks of wonder and pleasure. Ensler is on a fervent mission to elevate and celebrate this much mumbled-about body part. She asked hundreds of women of all ages a series of questions about their vaginas (What do you call it? How would you dress it?) that prompt some wondrous answers. Standouts among the euphemisms are tamale, split knish, choochi snorcher, Gladys Siegelman--Gladys Siegelman?--and, of course, that old standby "down there." "Down there?" asks a composite character springing from several older women. "I haven't been down there since 1953. No, it had nothing to do with [American president] Eisenhower." Two of the most powerful pieces include a jagged poem stitched together from the memories of a Bosnian woman raped by soldiers and an American woman sexually abused as a child who reclaims her vagina as a place of wild joy.

From the Back Cover:

"Women have entrusted Eve with their most intimate experiences, from sex to birthing. . . . I think readers, men as well as women, will emerge from these pages feeling more free within themselves--and about each other." --Gloria Steinem

"Spellbinding, funny, and almost unbearably moving . . . it is both a work of art and an incisive piece of cultural history, a poem and a polemic, a performance and a balm and a benediction." --Variety

"Often wrenching, frequently riotous. . . . Ensler is an impassioned wit." --Los Angeles Times

"A compelling rhapsody of the female essence. . . . Ultimately Ensler achieves something extraordinary.

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