Elevate Difference

Reviews by Ellen Keim

Ellen Keim

Ellen Keim writes about feminist issues and her personal experience of converting to Islam on her blogs Femagination and I, Muslimah. Her personal essays have been published in various magazines and anthologies. Her interests include German and Arabic languages and culture, city planning/living, history, politics, religion, reading everything she can get her hands on and, of course, writing. Her greatest fear is of being bored.

The Natural Wedding: Ideas and Inspiration for a Stylish and Green Celebration

“... the average wedding can send 14.5 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—roughly double an individual human's carbon footprint for a year.” So writes the author Louise Moon in the introduction to her book, The Natural Wedding. As the founder of EcoMoon, which specializes in designing green weddings, Moon is uniquely qualified to guide those who aspire to be responsible stewards of our planet.

WTF? Women: How to Survive 101 of the Worst F*#-ing Situations With the Ladies

The first time I flipped through this book, I felt like throwing it in the trash. The humor is crude and the tone misogynistic. But then I sat down and read it more carefully (not that it necessarily requires a careful reading). And I discovered that reading it was a lot like watching the performance of a stand-up comedian.

Death Echo

Death Echo is categorized as a suspense novel. On that score, the book delivers, but not for the reason that the author intended: I was in suspense for the entire book trying to figure out what was going on. Emma Cross, of the elite security consulting firm St. Kilda's, is assigned to find out if a newly commissioned yacht is the same yacht that was supposedly washed overboard on its way to being delivered.

Atomic Mom

I was born in 1952 and, although I don't remember public service announcements about the atom bomb like the ones M.T. Silvia includes in her feature-length documentary Atomic Mom, I do remember "bomb drills" when I was in elementary school. At least we didn't just crawl under our desks like some PSAs recommended; we went down to the sub-basement and hunkered down in the dark. I don't remember being scared, but then I don't think I had a very good idea of what the hell we were doing. I'm not sure anyone did.

Taking Women in New Directions: Stories from the Second Wave of the Women's Movement

Paula Kassell's Taking Women in New Directions is not what it sounds like. Rather than being stories about the women's movement in the '70s and '80s, it is primarily a collection of articles that Kassell wrote for the feminist newspaper, New Directions for Women (which she also co-founded and ran out of her own home for seven years).