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OUR BODIES, OURSELVES FOR OURSELVES AND OUR CLASSROOMS The Boston Women's Health Book Collective, OUR BODIES, OURSELVES, 9th edition. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011. 928p. notes, bibl. index, pap., $26.00, ISBN 978-1439190661. Website: www.ourbodiesourselves.org.
Loretta Ross, founder and national coordinator of SisterSong (Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective), describes it as "one of the most subversive books out there."1 Historian Linda Gordon provocatively proclaims it "[t]he American left's most valuable written contribution to the world."2 Time magazine names it one of the hundred most important nonfiction books of the twentieth century.3 And the Las Vegas Weekly tells men, "If you know where the clitoris is and importantly how to find it, you have books like [this] to thank for helping put women's sexual anatomy on the map.4 With press like this, wouldn't everyone want to see what "it" is about?
"It" is Our Bodies, Ourselves OBOS for short), which came out last year in a 928-page ninth edition that coincides with the fortieth anniversary of its beginnings as a collaborative, countercultural, typed and hand-calligraphed booklet for a workshop about women's bodies. Of course, many Feminist Collections readers probably have an older edition somewhere and at least vaguely remember the excitement from the old days. This review, then, will encourage readers to look at the latest edition of this classic through new eyes, especially about how to introduce a new generation of students to the book's powerful representation of the struggles, achievements, and longlasting impacts of women's movements. I can think of no other book that can reach today's students so well and stretch them to learn more about both the movements that got us here and today's global women's movements.
Today's OBOS
The ninth edition is not your mother's OBOS. It does, however, feel like a comfortable old friend, showing up with a somewhat new image but the same supportive and inspiring way of handling complex issues and encouraging critical thinking. Many "new" editions of books simply replace their introductions and update a few crucial sections. In contrast, the Boston Women's Health Book Collective puts enormous work into re-evaluating every aspect of OB OS when it prepares a new edition. The Collective engages with a diversity of readers, as well as non-readers, about what...