Women's Voices For Change

“Radiance,” “Truant,” and “Marking Him,”
by Margaret Hasse

By Rebecca Foust

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.

Film & Television

‘How to Please a Woman’—An Unlikely Crusader (and a Minimum of One Orgasm)

By Alexandra MacAaron

The film centers around the concept of women’s pleasure. It is positioned simultaneously as vitally important and absolutely ordinary.

Poetry

“Death by Chocolate,” by Sandra Beasley

By Rebecca Foust

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.

Film & Television

Reimagining ‘A League of Their Own’

By Alexandra MacAaron

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.

Film & Television · Music

Sounds of Summer: Diva Documentaries — A Streaming TV Roundup

By Alexandra MacAaron

Celebrate music’s female trailblazers, those who have succeeded against staggering odds, with these streaming documentaries.

Poetry

“Private Collection,” by Shelley Wong

By Amanda Moore

“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.

Film & Television

‘Santa Evita’ Raises Questions About Power and Control

By Alexandra MacAaron

'Santa Evita' delivers a compelling and compassionate portrait of the woman known as “the spiritual leader of a nation.

Poetry

Poetry Sunday: “Crab Feed,” by Kathleen McClung

By Rebecca Foust

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.

Film & Television

Lesley Manville Twinkles in ‘Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris’

By Alexandra MacAaron

'Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris' could have been made fifty or sixty years ago. It’s the sort of feel-good movie that is all too rare these days.

Poetry

“A Story about the Heart,” “Betrayals,” and “Bed,”
by Andrea Hollander

By Rebecca Foust

Poetry speaks, in part, the language of place—exterior, interior, and especially the intersection where the outer and inner come together, that vital third place that is evoked in these poems.

Film & Television

‘Where the Crawdads Sing,’ A Minority Opinion

By Alexandra MacAaron

The cast of 'Crawdads' is truly excellent. I found the film to be both moving and memorable.

Poetry

Poetry Sunday:
“Scuppernong Grapes,” by Susan Williamson

By Rebecca Foust

This poem was born the child of observation and memory. It recalls the first time I saw grapes growing in cultivation, and the wonder I felt at the light, the grapes and the arbor.

Film & Television

‘Mr. Malcolm’s List’ is Frothy Fun if Forgettable

By Alexandra MacAaron

With its enthusiastic young cast, yummy art direction, and satisfying, if one-thousand-percent predictable, plotline, 'Mr. Malcolm’s List' may be exactly the right way to spend some time this summer

Poetry

Poetry Sunday: “Hum,” by Cintia Santana

By Rebecca Foust

Narrative poems move time forward; lyric poems often try to capture the experience of a single moment in time, and reading “Hum”—especially aloud—presents the brief but unforgettable experience of getting buzzed by a hummingbird.

Film & Television

‘Watcher’: Elegant Thriller, Feminist Cautionary Tale

By Alexandra MacAaron

'Watcher' (and there is some question as to who is the watcher and who is being watched) is genuinely frightening.

Poetry

Poetry Sunday: “The Bay,” by Gail Mazur

By Rebecca Foust

“The Bay” is about loss, but also about what is not lost; about death, but also new life; about stasis and stagnation, but also about the breeze picking up and new life quickening in stem, blossom, and vine.

Film & Television

‘Loot’ and ‘God’s Favorite Idiot’:
Two Funny Ladies Who Deserve Better Vehicles

By Alexandra MacAaron

The networks have shown themselves to be particularly adept at creating vehicles for funny women. However, two new series that star two of the funniest women around falls flat.

Poetry

Ordinary Psalms
by Julia B. Levine

By Rebecca Foust

A major theme in 'Ordinary Psalms' is the speaker’s incipient loss of sight, a condition with rich metaphorical possibilities for the blindness of humanity in the abstract and also more concretely in recent American political cycles.

Film & Television

‘Good Luck to You, Leo Grande’: Worth a Good Long Look

By Alexandra MacAaron

Nancy Stokes is a retired religious education teacher, mother of two adult children, and recently widowed. You might think that sex would be low on her list. You’d be wrong.

Film & Television

New Documentaries Reveal the Horrors Women Face

By Alexandra MacAaron

'The Janes' underscores the dangerous and often deadly threat of unwanted pregnancy pre-Roe v. Wade through one compelling story.

Poetry

“Know, Heart” by Elisabeth Murawski

By Rebecca Foust

“Know, Heart” ends in a place of utter desolation and loss, with the heart so baffled by suffering that it cannot feel anything or even conceive of a future. All it can do is look blindly back into memory.

Film & Television

‘Charlotte,’ a Short but Remarkable Life in Art

By Alexandra MacAaron

The full-length animated feature traces Charlotte Salomon’s life from her teens as an art student in Berlin, through her escape to France, and her eventual capture and murder.

Poetry