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A poignant and hilarious tour of the last frontier, the ultimate forbidden zone, The vagina monologues is a celebration of female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery. Hailed as the bible for a new generation of women, it has been performed in cities all across America and at hundreds of college campuses, and has inspired a dynamic grassroots movement--V-Day--to stop violence against women. Witty and irreverent, compassionate and wise, Eve Ensler's Obie Award-winning masterpiece gives voice to real women's deepest fantasies and fears, guaranteeing that no one who reads it will ever look at a woman's body, or think of sex, in quite the same way again.… (more)
I wish I'd managed to see this staged. In text form, there's certainly something missing from a piece that is supposed to get us over the taboo of saying vagina out loud, only to read it silently and then not say vagina out loud. It's awesome to see how important the monologues were to the interviewees and the author regardless; a lot of the power remains, even for someone with zero experience of vagina possession. The paperback does come with explanations/backstory that rivals the length of the associated monologue at points, which is interesting but breaks the flow; I'm curious as to whether staged productions include these/whether more monologues have been added since the publication of this book. ( )
I read this play years ago and truth be told, some of the monologues fell flat on the second read. That being said I'm sure that seeing them performed would hold more meaning to me. The 10th anniversary edition includes spotlight monologues and essays that I hadn't read before which were truly beautiful, I would love to see a performance some day! ( )
This book does a decent job of sharing stories of the lost, hurt, dejected, and broken; the stories of some women who have been harmed by the patriarchy. I enjoyed the various formats used to connect with the audience. I did think however, that it was mostly white-centered feminism and lacked some nuance in regard to transgender rights and intersectionality. ( )
Every woman should read this and reclaim the words vagina and cunt as their own. The monologues collected by Eve Ensler are poignant and touching. They each play an important role in this piece by starting a dialogue about cruelty against women. ( )
For Ariel, who rocks my vagina and explodes my heart
First words
I come from the "down there" generation. --Foreword
I am not sure why I was chosen. --Introduction
I bet you're worried. --Body text
Quotations
Last words
I was there when her vagina opened. We were all there: her mother, her husband, and I, and the nurse from the Ukraine with her whole hand up there in her vagina feeling and turning with her rubber glove as she talked casually to us—like she was turning on a loaded faucet.
I was there in the room when the contractions made her crawl on all fours, made unfamiliar moans leak out of her pores and still there after hours when she just screamed suddenly wild, her arms striking at the electric air.
I was there when her vagina changed from a shy sexual hole to an archaeological tunnel, a sacred vessel, a Venetian canal, a deep well with a tiny stuck child inside, waiting to be rescued.
I saw the colors of her vagina. They changed. Saw the bruised broken blue the blistering tomato red the gray pink, the dark; saw the blood like perspiration along the edges saw the yellow, white liquid, the shit, the clots pushing out all the holes, pushing harder and harder, saw through the hole, the baby's head scratches of black hair, saw it just there beyond the bone—a hard round memory, as the nurse from the Ukraine kept turning and turning her slippery hand.
I was there when each of us, her mother and I, held a leg and spread her wide pushing with all our strength pushing and her husband sternly counting, "One, two, three," telling her to focus, harder. We looked into her then. We couldn't get our eyes out of that place.
We forget the vagina, all of us what else would explain our lack of awe, our lack of wonder.
I was there when the doctor reached in with Alice in Wonderland spoons and there as her vagina became became a wide operatic mouth singing with all its strength; first the little head, then the gray flopping arm, then the fast swimming body, swimming quickly into our weeping arms.
I was there later when I just turned and faced her vagina. I stood and let myself see her all spread, completely exposed mutilated, swollen, and torn, bleeding all over the doctor's hands who was calmly sewing her there.
I stood, and as I stared, her vagina suddenly became a wide red pulsing heart.
The heart is capable of sacrifice. So is the vagina. The heart is able to forgine and repair. It can change its shape to let us in. It can expand to let us out. So can the vagina. It can ache for us and stretch for us, die for us and bleed and bleed us into this difficult, wondrous world. So can the vagina. I was there in the room. I remember.
A poignant and hilarious tour of the last frontier, the ultimate forbidden zone, The vagina monologues is a celebration of female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery. Hailed as the bible for a new generation of women, it has been performed in cities all across America and at hundreds of college campuses, and has inspired a dynamic grassroots movement--V-Day--to stop violence against women. Witty and irreverent, compassionate and wise, Eve Ensler's Obie Award-winning masterpiece gives voice to real women's deepest fantasies and fears, guaranteeing that no one who reads it will ever look at a woman's body, or think of sex, in quite the same way again.
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Eve Ensler napisala je Vaginine monologe na osnovu razgovora s više od dvjestotinjak žena i stvorila iskrenu, žensku priču. Ovdje se radi o izravnim, iskrenim i oslobađajućim ispovijedima žena o načinu proživljavanja susreta s vlastitom ženstvenošću ispisanim poetičnim jezikom, ponekad duboko potresnim, a nekad neodoljivo humorističnim. Tekst se počeo izvoditi na njujorškim pozornicama, a zatim je autorica s njime proputovala cijeli svijet i dobila brojne nagrade.
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