Cootie Shots: Theatrical Inoculations Against Bigotry for Kids, Parents, and Teachers: Plays, Poems, and Songs Edited by Norma Bowles with Mark E. Rosenthal 2000 Weight: 1.9 lbs Method of Disposal: Donating
I am not an educator, and I do not work with children. I am confident that I would not be the best person to review this book. What I do like, is having helpful conversations with kids about race, ability, sexuality, gender, consent, age, and culture instead of acting like every person is the same and that you need to see no differences. This way of thinking hinders children, as they exist in a world where racism, sexism, ableism, etc DOES exist and then they do not have the words or comfort level to further explore and understand this. If we do not have the language, we cannot learn and progress.
This book offers playful ways to get children talking and learning about diversity. You know it is going to be good when one reviewer claims it will cause gender confusion in children and encourage cross-dressing! Mostly this book receives 5 star reviews, and it looks like that particular reviewer was never inoculated. Do you see what can happen?
Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Arts Samuel Beckett
19821
Weight: 8.8 oz
Method of Disposal: Donating
Growing up, I would sometimes hear my mom chuckle and say, "It is like we are waiting for Godot." Wanting to understand what that meant drew me to this book for the first time, and I have come back to it several times since. Often, when I myself feel like I am waiting for Godot, and I am getting restless and frustrated. This is a wonderful, repetitive play open to many more interpretations than the author likely could have imagined when he wrote it. I would love love love to see it performed in person one day.
The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler 2001 Weight: 9 oz. Method of disposal: Attempting to give it away through a social networking site. If I cannot I will move on to plan B.
Today, I am parting with my copy of The Vagina Monologues, complete with the highlighting of the fifteen year old I was when I bought it. I saw it on a shelf in the drama section at Waldenbooks when I worked there, and I bought it because of the title. I read the book that same night and loved it. It started a sort of-affair. I went to see college productions of it on a regular basis throughout the years and one time I went with my friend Sarah to see it done by Eve Ensler herself. Later, I would volunteer at an event that hosted Ms. Ensler and Jane Fonda. A whole group of us took a picture I have never seen. I remember Eve Ensler’s hand on my shoulder. Even later, I would go to Charis with a very attractive queer preacher to see her talk about her publication, The Good Body. This is yet another time when I will be disbanding a book from a complete collection of all the books written by an author. I use to be in awe of Eve Ensler. Can you tell? There has been a gradual letting go of that awe over the last six years and now I have a dull curiosity when I see her name in print. I will continue to read about her and her work. But I also think about that initial collection where a father buys his daughter a vagina—the only intersex narrative in the book—with dismay. She has spoken with students about it for years and compromises have been worked out, but it lingers in my copy and thousands of others. I think of Jakarta, Warsaw, Kenya, and other places where The Vagina Monologues has traveled and the mixture of emotions about it expressed in the feedback—the validity of the feelings of those who loved it and those who hated it. I love talking about sex, bodies, and sexuality. I also recoil from gynocentrism, and its effects on our beliefs about gender and sex as binary systems. There is a lot good about Eve Ensler and about The Vagina Monologues, and I will never forget my initial love for it. It is time for me to move on now. Looking at my highlights, “My Angry Vagina” was my favorite piece in the collection when I first read it. In hindsight, it is hard to imagine growing up without it. I found this book at the perfect time. It did what, I think, it was intended to do. It helped me fall in love and/or maintain my love for my genitalia—though I do not think my vagina is the truly important component of my anatomy. It pales in comparison to my clitoris, my ears, my neck, and my back.
