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Title: Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World by Judy Grahn ISBN: 0-8070-7505-1 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.8 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Fear of a Red Nation
Comment: The first time I picked up this book I got to the part about menstruation being the inspiration for chairs, and like another reviewer here, thought Grahn's ideas way out there and put the book aside. Fast forward five years and it makes a lot more sense to me. Grahn is a poet and relates a world before there was language, when what would become humans lived in trees and struggled day to day along side the other animals. Grahn posits that the correlation of the female menstrual cycle with the cycle of the moon served as the first physical distinction between animal and environment, and provided the metaphorical correlation necessary to all language. Lacan describes this as the mirror stage which happens in infancy. What Grahn describes is similar but takes place not with an individual but with an entire race, haltingly, and over a very long period of time.
None of us knows what happened in the dawning of human consciousness. Grahan weaves a credible account based on commonalities between ancient cultures, myths, and language. Still, her narrative departs so acutely from what we generally do, or or have not bothered to, imagine about our origins that it seems very easy to dismiss. Yet in a country where 45% of the people believe God created the world in seven days, made the first man out of dust, and the first woman out of one of his ribs, why is Grahn's version - based on the physically possible - so difficult to consider?
Much of what Grahn writes is speculation, a delving into the possible. The stories of women have been, throughout history, suppressed, stolen, and destroyed. We cannot totally recreate this lost history, but we can try on other ideas and take from them the value that they hold. For women to consider that their lives and their bodies were integral to the creation of human culture is no more absurd than the completely unsubstantiated idea (which 45% of Americans believe) that ONLY the lives and bodies of men were necessary to human culture - that a male god spoke the whole kit and caboodle into being in seven days, and women were just an afterthought.
So Judy, you go, girl. And please do write a book on menopause.
Rating: 1
Summary: Misinformation and blatant lies
Comment: This book is filled with not only misinformation, but also blatant lies. The author claims the practice of wearing shoes came from traditions of women in certain areas of the world not touching the ground with their bare feet while menstruating; it didn't have ANYTHING to do with people wanting to protect their feet against rocks and cold according to the author. She makes similar claims about utensils coming into use because of taboos regarding menstruating women scratching themselves with their hands, again not having anything to do with not wanting to burn oneself on hot food or dishing it out.
The idiocy doesn't stop there! The author actually goes on to suggest a link between menstrual huts and the development of hats among our foremothers because of the similarity in the words! Did she really think that our ancient foremothers spoke English?
I would not suggest wasting money on this book. For a truthful book that affirms women and our monthly cycle without resorting to making up false information just to make us feel good, get Lara Owen's book _Honoring Menstruation_ instead.
Rating: 3
Summary: I did love the history of the book!
Comment: But the thing I think it didn't contain as much of is relating to the title of the book. Don't get me wrong, I learned alot about being a weemon, but I still was looking for more of a book on the ways it creates the world, not random facts, etc. Or random coincidences.
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Title: Inanna, Lady of Largest Heart : Poems of the Sumerian High by Betty De Shong Meador ISBN: 0292752423 Publisher: University of Texas Press Pub. Date: February, 2001 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Sister Moon Lodge: The Power & Mystery of Menstruation by Kisma K. Stepanich ISBN: 0875427677 Publisher: Llewellyn Pubns Pub. Date: 01 June, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Curse: Confronting the Last Unmentionable Taboo, Menstruation by Karen Houppert ISBN: 0374526923 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 01 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruation by Thomas Buckley, Alma Gottlieb ISBN: 0520063503 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1988 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Shakti Woman : Feeling Our Fire, Healing Our World by Vicki Noble ISBN: 0062506676 Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco Pub. Date: 19 July, 1991 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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