Updated Review: My Little Red Book edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff

At the beginning of this week, Hachette released a new edition of My Little Red Book edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, which I reviewed last year. To mark the occasion, I’m reprinting my review with revisions to reflect the new edition. (Come back on Monday for a 10-book giveaway + my period story!)

When I started reading My Little Red Book, a collection of women’s stories about their first periods edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, I initially felt mildly disappointed because many of the stories seemed too short and, well, too ordinary somehow, not “literary” enough. And yet by the time I finished the book I felt moved to tears (and inspired to write about and reflect on my own experiences of menstruation). Covering some 90 years of women’s history (from 1916 to 2008) and including 99 essays and poems by women from all walks of life, the power of this anthology is not so much in the individual stories—although many of them are powerful in their own right—but rather in their collective impact. From funny to heart-rending, embarrassing to empowering, each of these stories illuminates what is, after all, a “momentous occasion” (as Nalebuff put it) in every woman’s life.

Highlights of this book for me were: “Hot Dog on a String, 1993” by Ellen Devine, who writes about witnessing something sacred as a child; “Ink Blots and Milk Spots, 1987,” an imaginative retelling of first blood by Krista Madsen; “The Simple Vase: Part I, 1997” and “The Simple Vase: Part II, 1997,” two versions of the same event written by mother and daughter Laura and Rebecca Wexler; “Blood Month, 1979” by Sandra Guy, who writes poignantly about growing up without her sister; and “Twelve-Step Program, 1946” by Marcia Nalebuff (the editor’s grandmother), a touching piece about a grandmother saying exactly the right thing.

Other reviewers have suggested this anthology is particularly good for preteens and mothers of preteens; while I wouldn’t disagree, I would add that My Little Red Book is likely to be of interest to all women.

What’s new in the new edition: There are seven new stories (so 99 instead of the original 92), including stories by Judy Blume, who also reflects on how her experience influenced her writing of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and Diablo Cody (as well as a contribution by a man, which I found a bit odd). Rachel also updates her introduction with a P.S. that mentions some of the things that have happened since the publication of the first edition (for example, “menstruation activism is now a real term”). In addition, the book is now illustrated with Rachel’s tiny (but very cute) drawings. The one thing I miss are the little pink panties, which used to be on the cover!

Hachette has generously agreed to sponsor a giveaway of 10 copies of this book on my blog! Come back on Monday for all the details.

Review: Piece by Piece: Stories about Fitting into Canada edited by Teresa Toten

Piece by Piece: Stories about Fitting into Canada edited by Teresa Toten is a collection of 15 stories (including one graphic essay and a spoken-word poem) targeted at young adults. Its contributors hail from all over the world: China, Croatia, England, Grenada, Hungary, India, Iran, Jamaica, Japan, Lebanon, Russia, South Africa and the U.S. About a third emigrated to Canada as children; most, however, moved here as adults. (Only one is a second-generation Canadian.)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Here are my thoughts on a few of the essays:

In “Snapshots from the Fringes,” Rachna Gilmore shares the story of how a beloved book—Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery—had a profound impact on her life. This story brought tears to my eyes, perhaps because I also read the Anne books as a teenager—and can identify with feeling a sense of both belonging and not belonging in PEI, which I visited every summer as a child (my father grew up there).

“A Caravan of Words” by Rachel Manley is probably my favourite essay in the book because it’s about cats and words and Montreal (even though she doesn’t love Montreal as I do)—and the anecdote about how Manley became the official Jamaican interpreter in Toronto is absolutely priceless!

The hardest essay to read was “You’re Not from Around Here, Are You?” by Linda Granfield, who came to Canada from the U.S. to go to university and found that Canadians didn’t live up to their reputation for being polite and tolerant. Instead, she found that anti-American sentiment was rampant—during the Gulf War, she felt she was living in fear in her adopted country. While I don’t want to belittle her experience, and I know firsthand the pain of being excluded based on your cultural background, I was uncomfortable with the fact that she used the word “racism” to describe this type of discrimination. At the same time, this piece made me squirm in recognition: anti-Americanism is unfortunately alive and fairly socially acceptable in Canada.

The weakest piece in the book was “Under the Armpit of Noah,” the spoken-word poem by Boonaa Mohammed. Perhaps it’s because I’m not generally a fan of spoken-word poetry—and no doubt the piece would have a greater impact if it was performed—but I found it didn’t sustain my interest in the same way the other stories did.

Finally, I had to wonder why the story “Shadow Play” by Rui Umezawa was included in this anthology. Although Umezawa now lives in Toronto, this essay is not about Canada at all—it takes place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin!

Exoticism, like accents and ethnicity, is something we often think only other people or places have—especially if we are white and North American. But in fact, everyone has an accent and an ethnicity—and every place can be exotic if seen from the outside, as evidenced from the stories in Piece by Piece. At the same time, a book like this is also a reminder that anyone can be an outsider, and most if not all of us have felt like outsiders at some point in our lives.

Other reviews: Movable Hype • Quill & Quire • Rover • Sal’s Fiction Addiction • Spin Me I Pulsate • What If?

You can also read an interview with the editor: Torontoist

Read Teresa Toten’s introduction to the book (and her powerful story): “My Piece”

Thank you to Penguin Canada for sending me this book to review.

Pathologies: A Life in Essays by Susan Olding (a review)

I first discovered—and fell in love with—personal essays when I read Remembering the Bone House by Nancy Mairs years ago in university. I was awed by her courageous truth telling about her life, partly because I grew up in a household where such truth telling wasn’t exactly encouraged: we could talk about ideas in the abstract much more easily than feelings in the here and now. As a result, Mairs became something of an inspiration to me. Although I’ve since devoured all of her books (except her latest), until recently I hadn’t found any other women essayists who write so honestly and unapologetically about their lives*—that is, until I read Pathologies: A Life in Essays by Susan Olding.

“Pathology,” the first essay in this book, chronicles Olding’s difficult relationship with her pathologist father, an alcoholic given to mercurial moods. This essay is so raw and clear-eyed, and yet completely unself-pitying that it literally took my breath away.

Another of my favourites is “On Separation,” a tribute to Olding’s sister-in-law, Jennifer. Olding alternates between meditating on separation using the metaphor of separating eggs to make almond cake and recording Jennifer’s losing battle with breast cancer. Although this may sound like an odd juxtaposition, this essay is one of the most moving pieces in the book.

Olding also writes a series of essays about her infertility, her decision to adopt her Chinese daughter Maia and her struggles as the parent of an adopted child. Of these, my favourite is “Mama’s Voices,” a wrenching piece about parental absence, writing about one’s child and Lana Turner. It’s hard to explain the structure of this essay, which alternates between sections called “Play,” “Fast Forward,” “Stop,” “Rewind” and “Record”—and I’m finding it equally hard to put into words the admiration I feel for Olding for writing (and publishing) this piece. In it, she contemplates reading a piece about her daughter at a writer’s conference:

That piece is too long, too personal, too difficult to excerpt, too domestic, too dependent on all its parts for a true effect, I tell myself. What I mean is, that piece is too revealing, too raw. Or maybe it’s just too real. (p. 201)

When she does workshop the piece, her classmates and instructors urge her to shelve her project and not write further about her daughter. All I can say is, thank you, Susan, for not listening to them.

One of my (minor) criticisms of this book is that I felt Olding overused the device of interweaving two or more elements in her essays. (Sometimes these elements are different narrative threads; at other times, she uses definitions or fictional passages.) It works brilliantly in many essays including the three I’ve already mentioned, but feels choppy and distancing in “How to Be a Volunteer,” for example (although maybe I liked this essay least of all because parts of it are written in the second person). I also don’t like the inclusion of fictional passages in a non-fiction book. Although Olding says in her notes at the end of the book that she trusts these passages will be identifiable from their context, I wasn’t sure they were fictional until I read her note.

I am in awe of writers like Mairs and Olding who transform the dross of everyday life into the gold of art—an alchemy I still aspire to. I highly recommend this book and hope Olding is working on her next one!

To read other reviews of this book, visit these blogs:
Rob McClennan’s Blog • The Owl’s Nest Blog

You can also read a review of this book at Quill & Quire.

Interviews with the author: Rob McClennan’s Blog • Writing. Life. (part I) • Writing. Life. (part 2)

Thank you to Freehand Books for sending me this book to review.


This is the first book I review for the Essay Reading Challenge.



*I’m sure there are others out there—I just haven’t come across them yet.

My Little Red Book edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff (a review & giveaway)

When I started reading My Little Red Book, a collection of women’s stories about their first periods edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, I initially felt mildly disappointed because many of the stories seemed too short and, well, too ordinary somehow, not “literary” enough. And yet by the time I finished the book I felt moved to tears (and inspired to write about and reflect on my own experiences of menstruation). Covering some 90 years of women’s history (from 1916 to 2008) and including 92 essays and poems by women from all walks of life, the power of this anthology is not so much in the individual stories—although many of them are powerful in their own right—but rather in their collective impact. From funny to heart-rending, embarrassing to empowering, each of these stories illuminates what is, after all, a “momentous occasion” (as Nalebuff put it) in every woman’s life.

Highlights of this book for me were: “Hot Dog on a String, 1993” by Ellen Devine, who writes about witnessing something sacred as a child; “Ink Blots and Milk Spots, 1987,” an imaginative retelling of first blood by Krista Madsen; “The Simple Vase: Part I, 1997” and “The Simple Vase: Part II, 1997,” two versions of the same event written by mother and daughter Laura and Rebecca Wexler; “Blood Month, 1979” by Sandra Guy, who writes poignantly about growing up without her sister; and “Twelve-Step Program, 1946” by Marcia Nalebuff (the editor’s grandmother), a touching piece about a grandmother saying exactly the right thing.

Other reviewers have suggested this anthology is particularly good for preteens and mothers of preteens; while I wouldn’t disagree, I would add that My Little Red Book is likely to be of interest to all women.

Thank you to Hachette for sending me this book to review.
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My Little Red Book is on blog tour throughout the month of March. Visit these other blogs for reviews, giveaways, interviews and guest posts:

Marta’s Meanderings • At Home with Books • B&b ex libris • Zensanity • Marjolein Reviews • Write for a Reader • Cafe of Dreams • Brimful Curiosities • Wendy’s Minding Spot • Book Bargains & Previews • Bookopolis • Worducopia • Ms. Bookish • Books in Every Room • The Epic Rat • Reading with Monie • The Book Lady’s Blog • Carol’s Notebook
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Would you like to win a copy of My Little Red Book? In honour of Women’s History Month, Hachette has generously offered to send five copies of the book to my readers. The giveaway is open to U.S. and Canadian residents only (no P.O. boxes). I will accept entries until 11:59 PM Eastern Time on Monday, March 30.

Since March is Women’s History Month, for one entry, leave a comment here and mention one of your favourite female historical figures. (If you want, you can also tell me why she’s one of your favourites).

For another five entries, become a follower of my blog or subscribe to my blog through Google Reader (or equivalent). If you are already a follower or subscriber, let me know and you will still get the five extra entries. (Please do not comment that you are a follower five times! I will tabulate each person’s entries separately.)

Please be sure to provide me with a way of getting in touch with you. Entries without a blog link or email address will be disqualified.

Best of luck and happy Women’s History Month!

The Dangerous Joy of Dr. Sex and Other True Stories by Pagan Kennedy (a review)

I can’t imagine why it took me so long to read one of Pagan Kennedy’s books. I fell in love with her writing voice from the first paragraph of her introduction to The Dangerous Joy of Dr. Sex and Other True Stories and was more than willing to follow her through the secret doorway “into a strange new realm.” In this collection of essays and articles, she writes about “oddities that [convince] you to expand your notions about what might be possible in this world,” as she says of one of her subjects. Although the promise of the introduction doesn’t quite carry through to the subsequent articles and essays*—some of the magic has leaked out of Kennedy’s writing—this doesn’t mean her book doesn’t make for fascinating (if too brief) reading. I thoroughly enjoyed the 12 vignettes of oddballs of all kinds, from Dr. Alex Comfort (the eponymous Dr. Sex) to a chatty African Grey parrot, not to mention a couple of MacArthur genius award winners. But where Kennedy really shines is when she writes about her own life and reveals that she too is an oddity, in the best sense of the word. Even though these last three stories are no longer than the others, she delves deeper and her writing is richer, more evocative, juicier. I can’t wait to get my hands on the rest of her books now.

This was one of my favourite books in 2008.

Read other reviews of this book on these blogs:
Literophilia • minds alive on the shelves • My Journey Through Reading • Presenting Lenore • Raging Bibliomania • The Tome Traveller’s Weblog

Thank you to the Santa Fe Writers Project for sending me this book to review.

*This is understandable given that most of these stories were originally written for magazines; however, her introduction does tantalize us with the promise of more...

(First posted on LibraryThing on June 28, 2008)

Storming Heaven’s Gate: An Anthology of Spiritual Writings by Women (a review)

Storming Heaven’s Gate: An Anthology of Spiritual Writings by Women edited by Patricia Vecchione and Amber Coverdale Sumrall is a great collection of spiritual writings by American women of all stripes, persuasions and colours. I mostly enjoyed every single piece, with only a couple of exceptions, and was introduced to quite a few new writers. My favourite pieces were those by Mary Karr, Sarah Rabkin, Joanna Macy, Lisa Vice, Sally Miller Gearhart, Agate Nesaule and Martha Gies. My only reservation about this collection is that I found the mix of fictional stories and personal essays a bit jarring at times (I wanted them all to be personal essays); however, some of my favourite pieces turned out to be stories. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in women’s spiritual experiences.

This was one of my favourite books in 2008.

(First posted on LibraryThing on February 13, 2008)