In the Body of the WorldRecommendations

A visionary memoir of separation and connection to the body, the self, and the world from the bestselling author of The Vagina Monologues and one of Newsweek's 150 Women Who Changed the World.

Eve Ensler is a playwright, novelist, and activist who has dedicated her life to exploring how to talk about, preserve, and cherish the female body. Despite this, she spent most of her childhood disconnected from her own body, a dissociation exacerbated by her father's sexual abuse and her mother's isolation.

Ensler, on the other hand, is startled out of her reverie. She is broken by the horrendous rape and abuse inflicted on women in the Congo where she is working. Soon after, she is diagnosed with uterine cancer, and she is compelled to become first and foremost a body, being poked, stabbed, sliced, and scanned for months. Then, and only then, is all distance eliminated. She is finally, totally, and joyfully united to the body of the globe as she ties her disease to the devastation of the land, her life energy to humanity's resistance.

Ensler's appeal to embrace our connection to and duty for the planet is unflinching, kind, and inspirational.