Elevate Difference

Reviews by Catherine Nicotera

Catherine Nicotera

Catherine Nicotera is a freelance writer currently living in Los Angeles. She spent a year teaching English in South Korea and traveling around Asia before moving to California. Her work has been published in Big World travel magazine and the now-defunct humor blog This May Hurt. Catherine specializes in writing reviews, as well as about all points east: the U.S. Eastern seaboard, particularly the mid-Atlantic states; Eastern Europe, particularly Poland and Russia; and East Asia, especially Korea and Vietnam. When not writing, she enjoys reading and running 5Ks.

A Woman's Agenda 2011: Celebrating Movers and Shakers

Whenever I walk into an office supply store, my heart bursts into song. Traipsing rapturously down the aisles of Staples or Office Depot, it's all I can do not to spin like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.

The American Way to Change: How National Service and Volunteers Are Transforming America

Mom. Apple pie. Service. In The American Way to Change, Shirley Sagawa convincingly argues that volunteering is both deeply rooted in American history, as well as a creative solution to modern societal challenges. Sagawa argues that service can be used to impact many entrenched social ills, including an ineffective public education system, an aging population with fewer family support systems, environmental degradation, and poverty.

All Over the Map

Author Laura Fraser has just celebrated her fortieth birthday and is attending a college reunion. While observing the range of accomplishments that have been accumulated over the years by her former classmates—and mentally comparing herself with them—a friend shares with Laura the idea of a Manhattan trifecta: you can, over the course of your life, have the perfect relationship, the perfect job, and the perfect apartment. Just not all at once.

Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

When she sleeps, her nose scrapes the ceiling of her small cottage. Her breasts hang from a pole over the fireplace, and she has a leg made of iron. She lives alone in a hut on chicken legs, and her gates are topped with human skulls. Passing heroes can flatter her and order her to do their bidding, but heroines must serve her in order to win her favor.

Westover: Giving Girls a Place of Their Own

Few phrases in the English language conjure up more vivid fantasies than the words all-girl school. The education of women—especially in an all-girl environment—is highly political. The ACLU has made the argument that single-sex education has not proven to be noticeably effective, and that it in fact weakens Title IX. There is a constellation of preconceptions that swirl around single-sex education.

The Widows' Might: Widowhood and Gender in Early British America

Honest. Scheming. Haughty. Charitable. Sinful. Virtuous. These are just some of the words used to describe American colonial widows by their contemporaries. Widows complicate the classic boundaries of the roles of “wife” or “mother,” and often have been forced out of the private sphere of their households into the public sphere of business in order to support themselves and their families.

Yi As Akh Padshah Bai (There Was a Queen)

Yi As Akh Padshah Bai (There Was a Queen) is a documentary that tells the story of women in Kashmir, the northwestern region of the India currently controlled by Pakistan, India, and China. The directors dub it "the world's most picturesque conflict zone". India and Pakistan have fought three wars over Kashmir, and conflict has been a constant in the region since the 1990's when Kashmiri separatists began clashing with both Pakistani and Indian forces.
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