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Title details for In the Body of the World by Eve Ensler - Available

In the Body of the World

A Memoir of Cancer and Connection

by Eve Ensler
Eve Ensler
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

From the bestselling author of The Vagina Monologues and one of Newsweek's 150 Women Who Changed the World, a visionary memoir of separation and connection—to the body, the self, and the world
Playwright, author, and activist Eve Ensler has devoted her life to the female body—how to talk about it, how to protect and value it. Yet she spent much of her life disassociated from her own body—a disconnection brought on by her father's sexual abuse and her mother's remoteness. "Because I did not, could not inhabit my body or the Earth," she writes, "I could not feel or know their pain."
But Ensler is shocked out of her distance. While working in the Congo, she is shattered to encounter the horrific rape and violence inflicted on the women there. Soon after, she is diagnosed with uterine cancer, and through months of harrowing treatment, she is forced to become first and foremost a body—pricked, punctured, cut, scanned. It is then that all distance is erased. As she connects her own illness to the devastation of the earth, her life force to the resilience of humanity, she is finally, fully—and gratefully—joined to the body of the world.
Unflinching and inspiring, Ensler's In the Body of the World calls on us all to embody our connection to and responsibility for the world.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 30, 2013

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781427231703
      • File size: 122468 KB
      • Duration: 04:15:08

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from March 11, 2013
      In this extraordinarily riveting, graphic story of survival, Ensler, an accomplished playwright (The Vagina Monologues) and activist in international groups such as V-Day, which works to end violence against women, depicts her shattering battle with uterine cancer. Having felt estranged from her body for a lifetime, and been molested as a girl by her father and enthralled by alcohol and promiscuity early on, Ensler as a playwright was seized with a political awareness of the dire violence committed against women across the globe. At the age of 57, she was blindsided when she discovered that her own health emergency mimicked the ones that women were enduring in the developing countries she had visited: "the cancer of cruelty, the cancer of greed... the cancer of buried trauma." Her narrative, she writes, is like a CAT scan, "a roving examinationâcapturing images," recording in minute, raw detail the ordeals she underwent over seven months. These include her crazed, "hysterical" response to the diagnosis and her treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., as well as extensive surgery, chemo, radiation, and caring by a "posse" of companions in misery, like her estranged sister, Lu, and far-flung friends such as Mama C, the head of the City of Joy women's center in the Congo. Her anatomy of the invasion of women's bodies is often difficult to read; the lesson she learns is that in order to heal, she has to submit her body to a renewed source of love and joy.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      To escape repeated rape by her father, Eve Ensler learned to disconnect from her body. "Because I did not, could not inhabit my body or the earth, I could not feel or know their pain," says the author of THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES. This disconnect led her to promiscuity and alcoholism, but it also led her to become an activist in the fight to end violence against women. In 2010, Ensler was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Ensler reads with the rhythms and cadence of an angry, passionate poet, intense and fully aware of the devastating irony of that diagnosis. Forced to deal with her body through extensive surgeries, chemo, radiation, and pain, she begins the healing process, slowly reconnecting to herself and the earth. Raw, unrelenting, no-holds-barred listening. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 24, 2013
      Best known for her seminal play The Vagina Monologues, Ensler recounts her time working in the Congo to help a female populace ravaged by rape and warfare. It’s an emotionally wrenching time for Ensler, who is later diagnosed with uterine cancer and finds herself forced to undergo months of invasive treatment. Ensler draws thematic connections between the two subjects—her own body’s treatment and that of women throughout the world. Ensler’s narration in this audio edition is as rich and personal as the text itself. One can sense her frustrations as her body rebels against her. Yet as a reader, Ensler’s range is limited, her performance often lacks subtlety, and she fails sometimes to transition smoothly between sections. A Metropolitan hardcover.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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