2018 marks the twentieth anniversary of V-Day, the radical grassroots movement to end violence against women and girls, inspired by Eve Ensler's international sensation The Vagina Monologues. This special edition features six never-before-published monologues, a new foreword by National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson, a new introduction by the author, and a new afterword by One Billion Rising director Monique Wilson on the stage phenomenon's global impact. A landmark work in women's empowerment, as relevant as ever after a year marked by unprecedented social and political protest in the face of unapologetic racism and misogyny, The Vagina Monologues honours women's sexuality in all its complexity, mystery and power. Witty and irreverent, compassionate and wise, this award-winning masterpiece gives voice to real women's deepest fantasies, fears, anger and pleasure, and calls for a world where all women are safe, equal, free and alive in their bodies. 'This play changed the world. Seeing it changed my soul. Performing in it changed my life' Kerry Washington

I have been exiled from my body. I was ejected at a very young age and I got lost. 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 many years disassociated from her own - a disconnection brought on by her father's sexual abuse and her mother's remoteness. While working in the Congo, Ensler 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 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.

Botox, bulimia, breast implants: Eve Ensler, author of the international sensation "The Vagina Monologues," is back, this time to rock our view of what it means to have a "good body." "In the 1950s," Eve writes, girls were "pretty, perky. They had a blond Clairol wave in their hair. They wore girdles and waist-pinchers. . . . In recent years good girls join the army. They climb the corporate ladder. They go to the gym. . . . They wear painful pointy shoes. They don't eat too much. They . . . don't eat at all. They stay perfect. They stay thin. I could never be good."
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The Good Body "starts with Eve's tortured relationship with her own "post-forties" stomach and her skirmishes with everything from Ab Rollers to fad diets and fascistic trainers in an attempt get the "flabby badness" out. As Eve hungrily seeks self-acceptance, she is joined by the voices of women from L.A. to Kabul, whose obsessions are also laid bare: A young Latina candidly critiques her humiliating "spread," a stubborn layer of fat that she calls "a second pair of thighs." The wife of a plastic surgeon recounts being systematically reconstructed-inch by inch-by her "perfectionist" husband. An aging magazine executive, still haunted by her mother's long-ago criticism, describes her desperate pursuit of youth as she relentlessly does sit-ups.
Along the way, Eve also introduces us to women who have found a hard-won peace with their bodies: an African mother who celebrates each individual body as signs of nature's diversity; an Indian woman who transcends "treadmill mania" and delights in her plump cheeks and curves; and a veiled Afghani woman who is willing to risk imprisonment for a taste of ice cream. These are just a few of the inspiring stories woven through Eve's global journey from obsession to enlightenment. Ultimately, these monologues become a personal wake-up call from Eve to love the "good bodies" we inhabit.

"From the Hardcover edition."

In her first new work since The Vagina Monologues, her Obie Award-winning smash hit, Eve Ensler tells the story of two American women, a Park Avenue psychiatrist and a human rights worker, who go to Bosnia to help women confront their memories of war and emerge deeply changed themselves. Necessary Targets is a groundbreaking play about women and war—about the violence of dark memories and the enduring resilience of the human spirit.

Melissa, an ambitious young writer, and J.S., a successful but unsatisfied middle-aged psychiatrist, have nothing in common beyond the methods they have been taught to distance themselves from other people. As J.S. begins to feel compassion for the women whose tragedies she has been sent to expose, she turns on Melissa, who finds safety in control. In an unexpected moment of revelation, J.S. and the women she is supposedly treating find a common ground, a place to be taught and a place to learn.

Necessary Targets has been staged in New York by Meryl Streep, Anjelica Huston, and Calista Flockhart, and performed in Sarajevo with Glenn Close and Marisa Tomei.

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's "In the Body of the World" calls on us all to embody our connection to and responsibility for the world.

While performance poetry was male-dominated in its inception, in recent years, women spoken word artists have become some of the most popular voices nationwide. The combination of the eminent slam movement and the upsurge of bold, underground feminisms created a unique pool of women verbally challenging society on all fronts. Word Warriors is the first all-women spoken word anthology, featuring the most influential female spoken word artists in the movement. Each contributor is a published writer, accomplished performer, and has received numerous accolades for her contributions to this art form. Contributors include Patricia Smith and Eileen Myles, two of the most formidable and famous spoken word foremothers. Tony Award--winner Sarah Jones talks about breaking into the mainstream, while Michelle Tea contributes her thoughts on class and sexual politics. We also hear the unique feminist perspective of Palestinian-born and raised Suheir Hammad and Trinidadian poet Lynne Procope, while Haitian artist Lenelle Moise shares the frustrations of performing for a Western audience. Each contributor provides a new and well-known spoken word piece, accompanied by an original essay about a pivotal moment or significant experience within her individual spoken word career, offering an illuminating peek into the artist's thought process, a rare chance for the reader to become intimate with the poet.

"Why has all this focus on security made me feel so much more insecure? Nothing is secure. And this is the good news. But only if you are not seeking security as the point of your life."-Eve Ensler
When her stage play "The Vagina Monologues" became a runaway hit and an international sensation, Eve Ensler emerged as a powerful voice and champion for women everywhere. Now the brilliant playwright gives us her first major work written exclusively for the printed page. Insecure at Last is a timely and urgent look at our security-obsessed world, the drastic measures taken to keep us safe, and how we can truly experience freedom by letting go of the deceptive notion of vigilant "protection."
Ensler draws on personal experiences and candid interviews with burka-clad women in Afghanistan; female prisoners in upstate New York; survivors at the Superdome after Katrina; and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan-sharing unforgettable snapshots that chronicle a post-9/11 existence in which hyped obsession for safety and security has undermined our humanity. The us-versus-them mentality, Ensler explains, has closed our minds and hardened our compassionate hearts.
Provocative, illuminating, inspiring, and boldly envisioned, Insecure at Last challenges us to reconsider what it means to be free, to discover that our strength is not born out of that which protects us. Ensler offers us the opportunity to reevaluate our everyday lives, expose our vulnerability, and, in doing so, experience true freedom and fulfillment.

"From the Hardcover edition."

Selections from the "Until the Violence Stops" Festival
Featuring writings by Abiola Abrams - Edward Albee - Tariq Ali - Maya Angelou - Periel Aschenbrand - Patricia Bosworth - Nicole Burdette - Kate Clinton - Kimberle Crenshaw - Michael Cunningham - Edwidge Danticat - Ariel Dorfman - Mollie Doyle - Slavenka Drakulic - Michael Eric Dyson - Dave Eggers - Kathy Engel - Eve Ensler - Jane Fonda - Carol Gilligan - Jyllian Gunther - Suheir Hammad - Christine House - Marie Howe - Carol Michele Kaplan - Moises Kaufman - Michael Klein - Nicholas Kristof - James Lecesne - Elizabeth Lesser - Mark Matousek - Deena Metzger - Susan Miller - Winter Miller - Susan Minot - Robin Morgan - Kathy Najimy - Lynn Nottage - Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy - Sharon Olds - Hanan al-Shaykh - Anna Deavere Smith - Diana Son - Monica Szlekovics - Robert Thurman - Betty Gale Tyson - Alice Walker - Jody Williams - Erin Cressida Wilson - Howard Zinn
This groundbreaking collection, edited by author and playwright Eve Ensler, features pieces from "Until the Violence Stops," the international tour that brings the issue of violence against women and girls to the forefront of our consciousness. These diverse voices rise up in a collective roar to break open, expose, and examine the insidiousness of brutality, neglect, a punch, or a put-down. Here is Edward Albee on S Maya Angelou on women's work; Michael Cunningham on self-mutilation; Dave Eggers on a Sudanese
abduction; Carol Gilligan on a daughter witnessing her mother being hit; Susan Miller on raising a son as a single mother; and Sharon Olds on a bra.
These writings are inspired, funny, angry, heartfelt, tragic, and beautiful. But above all, together they create a true and profound portrait of this issue's effect on every one of us. With information on how to organize an "Until the Violence Stops" event in your community, " A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer "is a call to the world to demand an end to violence against women.
"In the current era, it takes some brain racking to think of anyone else doing anything quite like Ensler. She's a countercultural consciousness-raiser, an empowering figure, a truth-teller."
-Chicago Tribune