‘Call Jane,’ A New Look at a Timely Topic
Recently, we’ve seen the emergence of a new film genre, as a number of movies — mostly thoughtful and impeccably well-made by women — tackle a topic that’s uniquely female.
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Poetry Sunday: “All Hallows Night,”
by Lizette Woodworth Reese
I love Lizette Woodworth Reese’s “All Hallows Night” because it bridges religions and cultures as a remembrance of people—family members, community heroes, saints, and martyrs—who have died.
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Scream Queens: Horror Movies Led by Women
Women have been creating scary movies, writing and/or directing as well as starring in them, for the past 120 years. Here are thirteen titles to explore, just in time for Halloween.
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‘The Good House’ is Good, but Sigourney Weaver is Great
Weaver’s extraordinary performance makes 'The Good House' great.
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A Juror Must Fold in on Herself
by Kathleen McClung
The hardest part of jury duty for me was being forbidden to talk about the trial until after our verdict. Writing poems months later helped restore the voice that had been silenced. —Kathleen McClung
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Princesses Are Doing It For Themselves
In 'Catherine Called Birdy,' the protagonist creates her happy ending by challenging assumptions and rewriting rules so they are better suited to everyone.
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“Even Now” by Susan Zimmerman
Sometimes we rely on poetry as a sort of goad—to bear witness, expose evil or hypocrisy in others, or expose ourselves to ourselves.
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Blonde — Still Exploited After All These Years
Aside from the jarring directorial choices and overall bleakness of 'Blonde,' what bothered me the most is that while individual predators and the Hollywood machine are condemned for exploiting Marilyn, 'Blonde' feels just as exploitive.
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“Life Line” by Ann Townsend
In these divided times I am grateful for poems like this to remind us of good things we may have taken for granted before—like just “getting” to sit in an uncomfortable folding chair in a school auditorium—and of the experiences many of us have in common.
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Viola Davis Rules The Woman King
'The Woman King' artfully and seamlessly blends some familiar movie genres with a fresh female perspective—following in the tradition of big-screen sagas like Gladiator, Braveheart, and Last of the Mohicans
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“Pyriscence” by Angelique Zobitz
As a Black Woman, I needed to tell this story of Black Women adapting, thriving, living, and/or dying in suboptimal conditions.
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Hillary, Chelsea, and Other ‘Gutsy’ Women
Their observations are keen; their enthusiasm is infectious. And, the genuine love and respect they feel for each other is something we can all celebrate as gutsy women ourselves.
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Poetry Sunday: “A Woman Walks into a Bar,”
by Sian Killingsworth
One strength of today’s poem, though, is that it works even for readers not familiar with that infamous case involving a Stanford swimmer convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious young woman behind a dumpster. Even before #metoo, sexual assaults like this are common enough, unfortunately, that readers will get the gist.
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Season 5 of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’:
As Relevant As Ever
There’s the feeling that in watching, we are somehow bearing witness. Here are the worst imaginable outcomes of some of today’s almost unimaginable events.
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“Chicago-Style Italian Beef,” from Vessel
by Parneshia Jones
"Chicago Style Italian Beef" is an ode to Chicago and Rome, two of my favorite cities in the world. It was my first time in Rome when I started to think about how things travel—food, recipes, cultures, and histories, and how we adopt them to our new surroundings and homes.
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Murder is a Family Affair in ‘Bad Sisters’
In 'Bad Sisters,' the marvelous new black comedy series on Apple TV+, four sisters band together to extract the fifth from a toxic marriage. The series takes sisterhood and girl power to a sinister new level.
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“Radiance,” “Truant,” and “Marking Him,”
by Margaret Hasse
My father, a math and astronomy professor at a small university in the rural Midwest, taught me to look up and learn about the night sky.
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‘How to Please a Woman’—An Unlikely Crusader (and a Minimum of One Orgasm)
The film centers around the concept of women’s pleasure. It is positioned simultaneously as vitally important and absolutely ordinary.
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“Death by Chocolate,” by Sandra Beasley
This poem draws attention to two convenient plot points. One is glibly introducing the death of a woman as a narrative catalyst; the other is the crisis of an anaphylactic reaction, invoked without any regard for the lived experience.
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Reimagining ‘A League of Their Own’
The new limited series, also titled 'A League of Their Own,' has many of the elements of the 1992 version. However, the focus here is on precisely what that movie missed.
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Sounds of Summer: Diva Documentaries — A Streaming TV Roundup
Celebrate music’s female trailblazers, those who have succeeded against staggering odds, with these streaming documentaries.
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“Private Collection,” by Shelley Wong
“Private Collection” by Shelley Wong perfectly captures the experience of museum-going. Standing in a museum gallery, our speaker sifts back through other galleries, thoughts, and experiences as a woman and as a partner, a private (re)collection of sorts.
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‘Santa Evita’ Raises Questions About Power and Control
'Santa Evita' delivers a compelling and compassionate portrait of the woman known as “the spiritual leader of a nation.
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Poetry Sunday: “Crab Feed,” by Kathleen McClung
The poem captures the relaxed, meandering qualities of still-light-at-night community meals in high summer. Community, family, plenty, gratitude—we feel all this in the poem, and understand the way ordinary experiences can sometimes transcend themselves.
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