Cool New Title: "I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life Of Girls Around the World," by Eve Ensler

I don't want this blog to default to the female type all the time.  That said, I was browsing through some of our new books today and came across this title that I thought seemed compelling and related in many ways to issues of beauty or physicality.  So, of course, this has to be about girls, right?  Yes.  Still, I wanted to just spotlight this book for you: In her new book, Eve Ensler, the author of The Vagina Monologues, has collected fictional monologues and stories inspired by girls all over the world.  The voices in the book cover a world of topics and emotions.  They are smart, complicated, tender, and most of all, alive.  To give you an idea of the subjects covered, take a look at the titles of selected pieces:

•                   You Tell Me How to Be a Girl in 2010
•                   Bad Boys
•                   What I Wish I Could Say to My Mother
•                   It's Not a Baby, It's a Maybe
•                   Things I Heard About Sex
•                   hunger blog
•                   The Joke About My Nose
•                   A Teenage Girl's Guide to Sex Slavery
•                   Refuser
•                   Things That Give Us Pleasure

Ensler seems a born nuturer: both empathetic and empowering.  In her introduction she writes:

     "Everyone seems to have a certain way they want you to be--your mother, father, teachers, religious leaders, politicians, boyfriends, fashion gurus, celebrities, girlfriends.  In researching this book I came upon a very disturbing statistic: 74 percent of you say you are under pressure to please everyone.
     I have done a lot of thinking about what it means to please.  To please, to embody the wish or will of somebody other than yourself.  To please fashion setters, we starve ourselves.  To please boys, we push ourselves when we aren't ready.  To please popular girls, we end up acting mean to our best friends.  To please our parents, we become insane overachievers.  If you are trying to please, how do you take responsibility for your own needs?  How do you even know what your own needs are?"
She continues, "This book is a call to questions rather than to please.  To provoke, to challenge, to dare, to satisfy your own imagination and appetite."

To read more about this book Click here.  or  just check it out at the library on our New Books kiosk in the Main Lobby.

Okay, I'm off to get my hair color done.....see you later!