2024 the best woman body in the world review

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From the best-selling 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, generous, and inspiring, Ensler calls on us all to embody our connection to and responsibility for the world.

Reviewer: patricia murphy bolten
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: tWhile this was in no way a happy book, there is nothing happy about cancer
Review: tWhile this was in no way a happy book, there is nothing happy about cancer. As a near death cancer survivor, without a support system of other "possible survivors". (the medical standard of survival is five years.) If cancer comes back and kills you after five years, you're still a survivor. Statistics are created to feed the medical machine (in my opinion, experience and understanding of information from doctor friends). Eve doesn't care to address this issue. Her mission is different. I found myself journaling, perhaps even more than I was reading. It helped me and I have been in need of this help for many years. Cancer doesn't begin the day we're diagnosed. My own had been a confusing fifteen years prior to that event. Eve's story, juxtaposed against a background of murder and rape as a war tool in the Congo, and what is happening to women around the globe is jolting for anyone, male or female, who is brave enough to deal with these impossible issues. Sometimes, as in Ann's and my case it's necessary in order to "heal". We never completely heal from either assault. Eve Ensler is brave, brilliant and not self-indulgent as she takes on this monumental task. Bravo, Eve. And Bravo to any man or woman who will read this beautifully written expose'/memoir; with or without a cancer experience (or a Congo experience).

Reviewer: V. M. Ricks
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Exceptional
Review: While I don't ever remember reading the memoir of a cancer survivor, this book was exceptionally well done. Eve is quite a unique woman, who has successfully navigated her body, and now she had to find the place for that body to be in this world. While she was quite open and candid about many bad things others may think she had done, I definitely understood and appreciated that she was NOT a bad person. This grown and mature person then had to grew some more. And she did. She swam with the sharks and came out complete. She lost a lot. She managed to get herself back to whole, if not physically, then spiritually.It was an inspiring story. There was never a dull moment. I appreciated the bridges that she built back to people who had mattered but they had hurt her; some bridges were opened to people who should have mattered but now do. She was constantly making connections, opening windows and building bridges. I wish more people could be this open. She revealed a lot and provided a way forward. I will try to remember her journey, when life gets tough. Connecting to people and projects that you love is a definite lesson that I learned from her memoir.

Reviewer: Cheryl
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Riveting
Review: Eve Ensler's memoir is the most extrodinary, powerful book I have read in years. Her writing style is close to poetic, yet her material is so painful and raw. It is a story, despite the topic (incest, uterine cancer treatment, the brutalities that are taking place in the Congo against female etc.) needs to be told and heard. She holds nothing back in her honest portrayal of her life experiences and I am in awe of her courage, her vision and that someone as giving and caring as Ms. Ensler's not only turns her horrific experiences into something good, but that she offers us this exceptional memoir to share her views and work to date. Truly a a gift that shall remain with me.

Reviewer: judith straffin
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Not for the Squeamish
Review: Not for the squeamish or the fainthearted. Not for the indifferent or the complacent. Eve Ensler, famous for her play, The Vagina Monologues, has written an impassioned memoir which uses her personal story of enduring treatment for a huge, Stage IV uterine tumor, as a metaphor for our destruction of our planet and for our toleration of the atrocity of gang rape as a weapon of war. Again and again, Ensler shows us the links between her own ordeal and the ordeal of a suffering planet, especially its women.Ensler became absorbed in the stories of these women, especially in Congo, who had been so savagely raped that they developed fistulae (a fistula is a tear in the vaginal wall), which made them permanently incontinent. Ensler was so horrified by their ordeals that she vowed to create, for these women, a refuge where they could heal, physically and emotionally. She pays tribute to a brilliant and selfless, heroic doctor, Dr. Mukwege, who has performed surgery on these damaged women, and to the women who, even if they cannot walk, still sing and dance, and who, in turn, help others like themselves. Ensler began fund-raising for a place, called City of Joy, where women could receive surgery to heal their bodies AND, at the same time, rescue their souls.Given her own history, Ensler was shocked to discover the irony of a tumor the size of a grapefruit in her uterus. Although aware that something was wrong, she ignored the tumor until it had spread throughout her reproductive system, threatening her, at 57, with disfigurement and death. She shows us the links between her own personal denial and our collective denial of phenomena like global warming, the destruction of species, and the use of rape as a weapon of war. Fully aware of this irony, she, who had written so compellingly about these women, developed the same sort of fistula as they, although she was lucky enough to have insurance and access to skilled care. For me, the story of Ensler's own ordeal was, the most compelling aspect of the book; I sometimes got a bit tired of her belaboring the correspondences between her own story and that of our damaged planet. I know that, for her, these correspondences are all-important, but even feminist environmentalist pacifists may tire of her incessant pontificating.Still, In the Body of the World, is a bold, engrossing, impassioned plea for all of us to wake up to the damage we are doing ourselves, others, and our planet. Although this book is graphic, uncompromising and terrifying, it is ultimately a testament to survival, and to joy.Four stars.

Reviewer: Ms. J. H. Mundler
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I have the audio version of this book also and feel that hearing the author read in her own voice adds authenticity to the text. It is actually quite a depressing book but provides a clear and compelling account of the impact of the physical and emotional impact of childhood sexual abuse.

Reviewer: Rensina
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Good book, can't say I 'enjoyed' it, as reading about another woman's suffering is challenging. But all power to you Eve for coming through it...your 'fight' is a fight for many and I respect and honour your words as you shared them in this book.It is raw, harsh and brutal...but that, IS what many women's lives are like. I love the honesty and the fact Eve held nothing back.

Reviewer: Carol Paterson
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I could not put this book down. Having had uterine cancer and radiation twenty years ago it was aneye opener to read about Eve who left it too long and went through this terrible journey of treatment.Reading about what the women in the Congo suffer at the hands of men is truly shocking, where is the WorldCommunity on this terrible disaster that is happening every day??? The underlying thread of the book iswhat Eve suffered at the hands of her Father, obviously this is something that is with you forever and myheart goes out to her, she is one amazing woman! My daughter is undergoing breast cancer treatment at themoment and says she could not read this book but maybe one day, all being well. she will.

Reviewer: Tao Yoga Bonn
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: a must read for anyone traumatized by abuse and very buisy not feeling it, therfore abusing oneself....I felt drawn into Eve's storie and am touched deeply by her honesty and openenss to let us (reader) into her life, learning how she was able to survive the cancer....

Reviewer: Jeanine Munyeshuli
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Eve Ensler pours her naked heart out. She powerfully connects the dots on how all of life is one. BRAVA!