The Uterine Health Companion: A Holistic Guide to Lifelong Wellness

admin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 07:44:00 +0000

In The Uterine Health Companion, Eve Agee brings her training as a medical anthropologist and as a holistic healer to bear on the subject of life-long uterine health. She begins the book by explaining both holistic health and the structure and function of the uterus to her readers. Then she outlines a plan for optimal uterine health, with chapters on emotional/spiritual and mental health, the power of nutrition and the importance of a strong body.

In part three, Agee discusses what she calls “Uterine Health Conditions” and these span from menarche to menopause and beyond. This is a book for women at every stage of reproductive life. This is also a book for Western women specifically.

Agee’s training in Africa has led her to question the disproportionate distribution of uterine maladies from a global perspective. Without ever insinuating that western women have their menstrual woes all in our heads (so common to masculinist approaches to women’s reproductive health, as I’m sure most of you are aware), Agee asks why it is that PMS, endometriosis and hot flashes (to name some examples) are so prevalent in the west but comparatively minimal in the non-western world. Agee indicates that dominant western attitudes about women’s bodies and women’s reproductive systems and abilities have actually contributed to menstrual, reproductive and menopausal illness in the western world. I found that to be the most interesting thing about her book.

I can’t say I learned much about the nature of uterine health conditions or about things to do for optimal uterine health, but I’m a reproductive health geek, so I came to the book with a fair amount of knowledge. Still, the reminder to eat my orange and red veggies was a good one and encouragement to keep up on exercise is always appreciated. The part I just couldn’t do was the holistic bit: I just couldn’t bring myself to do the guided visualizations. Certainly, that had more to do with my own comfort zones. Still, I just wasn’t prepared to enter my uterus and talk to the people/things I met there (though it was fun to tell my mother do to so).

Agee’s style is engaging and easy without being overly simple. A quick read, enjoyable and timely.

Written by: kristina grob, July 1st 2010

Encarnación: Illness and Body Politics in Chicana Feminist Literature

admin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Suzanne Bost

Fordham University Press

The pockmarks on the Aztec figure on the cover of Suzanne Bost’s Encarnación: Illness and Body Politics in Chicana Feminist Literature are a reminder of the proximity of disease, illness, and pain to death. Chicana artist Maya González’ painting is in fact entitled Death Enthroned, and serves as a constant thematic backdrop to Bost’s book since it embodies many of the themes that Bost will deal with in her study of Chicana feminist literature: Aztec culture, illness, death, religion, and woman’s precarious position in the intersection of these elements.

Bost’s study is not the first to examine Chicana feminist literature, as many readers will note (many such studies have been reviewed by FR). In effect, the three authors Bost chooses to analyse are part of the established cannon of Chicana literature, with Gloria Anzaldúa being the face of said literature with twice as many critical articles written on her (over 200 in the MLA directory as of April 1, 2010). Both of the other writers, Cherríe Moraga and Ana Castillo, have also established themselves in the last twenty years or so. All three have been studied within other “literary labels,” such as Queer Studies for Cherríe Moraga and Ecocriticism for Ana Castillo, for example.

Separately, all three authors have been examined under the relatively new label of Disability Studies, but the intersection of Disability Studies with Chicana Feminist Literary Studies is a novelty, which Bost (and other academics) sees as appealing. In the contextualization of her analysis, Bost finds it fitting to differentiate studies on the Female Body (which have been done for each of the writers mentioned) with Disability. This is perhaps one of the most interesting theoretical parts of her analysis since the line separating the two is very fine: pain, illness, and disability are all part of the bodily construction and seem inseparable. Thus, Bost’s analysis is enlightening as to what exactly is new in her approach: a Chicana identity rooted in the body, but which transcends it, as her use of the Spanish term encarnación (incarnation) in the title signals both a figurative and literal embodiment. Bost specifically writes that she is interested in “the ways in which other corporeal qualities—ones that are not genetic, visible, or already politically inscribed as an assumed axis of oppression/privilege—upend the familiar forms of identity.”

Before moving to individual chapters examining each author, Bost explores the context of identity and grounds Chicana identity in the Aztec traditions. The author is very thorough in her reminder of all the Aztec symbolism throughout the four chapters and, for those of us who need a refresher, there is an abundance of useful information. What Bost terms as a hagiographic (reverential towards the religious figures) study of Aztec culture is also useful in that it establishes an unconventional (read non-Christian) relationship to pain, illness, death, and their relationship to representation in that tradition. Furthermore, in this chapter Bost chooses to iconize Frida Kahlo as one of the central contextualizing figures for the Chicana disability studies as she epitomizes both analytical elements, as well as being a significant influence on all three authors.

All three chapters on the individual authors are well written and quite detailed. However, one can but lament the fact that Bost did not take the opportunity to write a proper conclusion to her study (one that would have reiterated the more direct links between the writers and come to some consensus about the use of Disability Studies as a useful tool to examine Chicana Feminist Literature). Although I personally find her introduction of the Chicana artists Maya González and Diane Gamboa in her conclusion to be fascinating and informative, it is Chicana Feminist Literature that her study chooses to focus on, and it would have been interesting to see if Bost had found relevant links to other Chicana writers. With the prominence of the Chicana women artists and the inclusion of the twelve beautiful color plates in her book, it is almost fitting to suggest that the book be renamed Encarnación: Illness and Body Politics in Chicana Feminist Representation.

Written by: Sophie M. Lavoie, April 22nd 2010

body politics

The Uterine Health Companion: A Holistic Guide to Lifelong Wellness

Encarnación: Illness and Body Politics in Chicana Feminist Literature