The Vagina Monologues

Ensler, Eve

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Collection (Essays)

Annotated by:
Wear, Delese
  • Date of entry: Mar-26-1998

Summary

This small but dramatically funny, tender, provocative and ultimately political book is a series of interviews with a diverse group of over 200 women about their vaginas: young and old, married and single; heterosexual, bisexual, and lesbian; working class women, professional women, and sex workers; women of various races. As the author points out, some of the monologues are verbatim, some are composites, some are her invented impressions. The subjects, which all have to do with vaginas, include such topics as what a vagina looks like, what goes in and comes out of vaginas, menstruation and birth, and more playfully, "If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?" or "If your vagina could talk, what would it say, in two words?"

Commentary

This is an extraordinarily forthright, funny, and dead-serious book about women's and girls' relationship with their sexuality, specifically their vaginas. It is sophisticated, intelligent, creative, and earthy all at the same time. It would be a welcome, if not startling, addition to a syllabus examining sexuality or women's health, for no one could finish the book without acquiring new perspectives on the complexities of growing up female in U.S. culture and the hurdles women face in overcoming misogynist conceptions of the female body. It will delight many and offend some.

Miscellaneous

The Vagina Monologues won an Obie Award in 1997 for Ensler's one-woman play--The Vagina Monologues--performed by the author.

Publisher

Random House: Villard

Place Published

New York

Edition

1998

Page Count

109