Alexandra Brodsky

Rachel Kauder Nalebuff

What would a world that matched your values look like? Today's leaders envision the ideal future of feminism.

Feminist Utopia Project

Poetry. Art. Perfomance Studies. Literary Nonficition. Can care be enacted through art? Inside a cathedral, staff members from a nursing home work with an artist to perform a poetic text about caregiving, loss, and taking the time to feel one's feelings. In the months leading up to the performance, the artist navigates her twenties--and art and life converge in unexpected ways. Weaving between oral history and poetic prose, Rachel Kauder Nalebuff has created a stirring work of hybrid nonfiction that takes us behind the scenes of artmaking and caregiving. Melding curiosity, humility, playfulness, and self-deprecation, STAGES is an inquiry into the work it takes to sustain a meaningful life."STAGES is one of a very few recent books I have read that feels truly revolutionary, in both form and in content. It consists of documentary materials assembled, in a style somewhere between Svetlana Alexievich and Andre? Breton, by a young writer, while staging a theater production in a nursing home. In a series of eye-opening interviews, she talks to housekeepers and nurses from Jamaica and Ghana about ghosts and family structure; to a clinical nutritionist, who explains how she helps people stop eating food, after a lifetime of eating food. Basically we're on a tour of a parallel institutionalized world of aging and dying which has been zealously cordoned off from the rest of American life, and which is not without its Kafkaesque elements, but our guide, Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, is so humane, curious and visionary that the overall effect is energizing and uplifting. Reading STAGES gave me the revelatory feeling of looking at something I'd been dreading, and seeing that it was actually OK, and vital, and a major part of life. STAGES brings humanity, humor, and a strong visual sensibility to a taboo subject, with exhilarating results. It expanded the way I think about family, theater, and a 'good life.'"--Elif Batuman"Caring work, emotional labor, and end-of-life care are useful abstractions; this wonderful book that weaves together interviews with nursing home workers and the author's own reflections on life, death, and making art, fills them with life. Given that we all die, and that most of us will care for others and require care ourselves in that process, everyone should read this book, sit with it, and absorb its lessons."--Kathi Weeks"STAGES is the kind of story-telling that we need more of. Care is so fundamental to who we are and the values we all share, and yet is too often hidden away rather than celebrated. Whether we are caregivers for our own family members, or whether we are professional caregivers, this role stitches together the very fabric of our society, connects generations and cultures. This story is told beautifully in STAGES."--Ai-Jen Poo, Executive Director of The National Domestic Workers Alliance and Director of Caring Across Generations

On Dying, Working, and Feeling

Stages

Presents a collection of stories from a variety of women detailing their experiences of their first period.

My Little Red Book

A Scottish MP celebrates making period products freely available. A father admits embarrassment at buying pads for his daughter. A Jewish grandmother describes getting her first period in front of Nazi soldiers. A trans woman, a trans man and a non-binary person share their stories. And a marathon runner makes crimson waves. From the first red flag to the last goodbye, from Indigenous rites to medical frontiers, from miscarriages to menopause, from pain to pride, from 'free bleeding' in public to bleeding behind bars - the underwear, the oversight, period poverty and protests - Our Red Book takes us to every corner of the globe and every voice yet unheard. Featuring contributions from Gloria Steinem, Judy Blume, Reyna Grande, Madame Gandhi, and Florence Given, Our Red Book is a collection of oral histories, written and visual testimonies from extraordinary people around the world, gathered especially by the New York Times bestselling editor of My Little Red Book.

A People's History of Menstruation

Our Red Book

A collection of essays, oral histories, and artworks about periods across all stages of life, compiled by the editor of the New York Times bestselling anthology My Little Red Book. Rachel Kauder Nalebuff was a shy teenager who was embarrassed to talk about anything relating to the body when she first heard her great aunt's harrowing story of getting her first period while on a train fleeing Nazi-occupied Poland. Rachel started wondering about other stories like this, other intimate histories that have never been told. She started asking people--friends, family members, and later, artists, writers, politicians, and public thinkers--about their own memories of menstruation and growing up. Stories poured out of people. And Rachel kept collecting these stories for more than twenty years. Our Red Book takes us through stories of first periods, last periods, missing periods, and everything about bleeding that you wish you'd been told. Weaving between eighty-three voices, including those of musician Madame Gandhi, feminist icon Gloria Steinem, graphic novelist Trinidad Escobar, Olympic skateboarder Alexis Sablone, high school students, and grandmothers, the book invites us on a collective journey of growth and change, with Rachel's own voice as a guide. Our Red Book shows us that menstruation is a lens, like birth and death, through which to understand what it means to be human. Everyone has a story. The result is a people's history of menstruation, told through an array of perspectives and identities that span the globe.

Intimate Histories of Periods, Growing & Changing

MY LITTLE RED BOOK is an anthology of stories about first periods, collected from women of all ages from around the world. The accounts range from light-hearted (the editor got hers while water skiing in a yellow bathing suit) to heart-stopping (a first period discovered just as one girl was about to be strip-searched by the Nazis). The contributors include well-known women writers (Meg Cabot, Erica Jong, Gloria Steinem, Cecily von Ziegesar), alongside today's teens. And while the authors differ in race, faith, or cultural background, their stories share a common bond: they are all accessible, deeply honest, and highly informative. Whatever a girl experiences or expects, she'll find stories that speak to her thoughts and feelings. Ultimately, MY LITTLE READ BOOK is more than a collection of stories. It is a call for a change in attitude, for a new way of seeing periods. In a time when the taboo around menstruation seems to be one of the few left standing, it makes a difficult subject easier to talk about, and helps girls feel proud instead of embarrassed or ashamed. By revealing what it feels like to undergo this experience first hand, and giving women the chance to explain their feelings in their own words, it aims to provide support, entertainment, and a starting point for discussion for mothers and daughters everywhere. It is a book every girl should have. Period.

Rachel Kauder Nalebuff

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