11/06/2017
This coffee table book combines photographic portraits of and brief comments from 200 beautiful and strong women from around the world to showcase accomplishments and inner worlds of women across the world. Portraits are accompanied by the subject’s responses to questions that range from trite—“Which single word do you most identify with?”—to revealing—“What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?” Physicist Vandana Shiva, from India, answers the latter by saying it is the “desertification in the hearts of people,” that happens when a person is “wasted” and does not reach “full evolution.” The subjects in the book include a range of woman, any one of whom could easily be a role model to the next generation. Contributors include Linda Sarsour, who cochaired the historic Women’s March in 2017; Suha Issa, a mother of four who works as an English teacher to Palestinian and Syrian refugees in Beirut; and Cecilia Chiang, who emigrated to the United States from China in the 1950s and opened her own restaurant. While the paradigm for modern womanhood as depicted in the book has the feel of an echo of an unoriginal theme, the value is in the range of diverse and accomplished subjects. Color photos. (Oct.)