The Vagina Monologues

"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. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Ensler's powerful, funny, incisive, insightful meditation on one of the most proscribed, vilified, taboo-tainted, shame-shrouded bodily organs in our phallocratic culture is based on personal reminiscences and on interviews with dozens of women of various religious, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. Its topics include the many attitudes women have about their vaginas, ranging from fear to fascination, and the ways those attitudes reflect and influence attitudes about sexuality, health, body image, and even spirituality. Even in the wrong hands–say, of a dry academician–Ensler's material would be enlightening. Fortunately, Ensler is first and foremost a storyteller and has fashioned her material into a highly readable script in which interviews are distilled to pithy brevity or reformatted as emotionally charged prose poems. Reading it, it is not hard to see why the off-Broadway one-woman show Ensler also crafted from its material met with critical and popular success and won Ensler a coveted Obie award. Jack Helbig –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.