Thought-provoking statements on almost every page; unmissable for women’s studies and religion students.
This collection of interview transcripts brings 24 experts, mostly psychologists and social scientists, together in a scholarly examination of the feminine.
Debut author Salum used Kickstarter to fund her 2014 documentary, also entitled Ensoulment. This women’s studies project relied on interviews with experts but created an animated protagonist who was, like the author and director herself, on a journey to understand the feminine. “What I was really after was not the female gender, but a matter of the soul, the impalpable,” Salum recalls. Her direct inspiration was a BodySoul Rhythms women’s retreat run by the Marion Woodman Foundation, which explores the Jungian idea of the feminine. Indeed, a number of the analysts and academics Salum interviews work within the Jungian framework. Many emphasize that feminine and masculine are not strict categories but interrelated principles, akin to the Eastern notion of yin and yang. “The whole business of opposites does not exist anywhere in the world. Everything is complementary,” one psychologist insists. Attempts to define the feminine abound—“the rhythmic…and the intuitive,” “both strength and delicacy, both firmness and love,” and “the great round…the encircling embrace”—but, crucially, Salum’s interlocutors always retain a sense of mystery and lived experience. They explain that the feminine is an archetypal quality to tap into rather than a distinct set of stereotyped behaviors and characteristics. The discussions in this original work center on six themes—the media, the body, men, relationships, work, and religion—but stray widely within those parameters to take in everything from eating disorders and fertility symbols to the goddess role that pop stars play in today’s culture. The interviews exhibit impressive depth as well as range, and the fact that one-third of Salum’s subjects are male prevents this from turning into a triumphalist, girl-power narrative. Instead, these are nuanced arguments that divorce gender from spirit. Each interview is headed by a photograph or cartoon avatar of the subject, a few biographical paragraphs, and Salum’s intriguing reflections on how she knew of and decided to include them.
Thought-provoking statements on almost every page; unmissable for women’s studies and religion students.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63051-390-0
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Chiron Publications
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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