Girl Rising is a feature-length film at the center of 10×10’s global action campaign for girls’ education. Marie Arana, VQR's guest editor for the Fall 2012 issue, is one of its scriptwriters. Read her piece for VQR, "Dreaming of El Dorado", about girls' education in Peru.
Table of Contents
Fall 2012: The Female Conscience
Review the entire contents of our Fall 2012 issue, now available in print and online.
Essay
Is There Such a Thing as the Female Conscience?
Jean Bethke Elshtain
A brief history of the subject from Plato to the current day.
Dreaming of El Dorado
Marie Arana
In La Rinconada, Peru, the highest human habitation in the world, legions of miners seek gold and one young girl seeks an education.
Is Too Much Mothering Bad for You?
Judith Warner
A look at the new social science.
Fiction
A Book of Martyrs
Joyce Carol Oates
A young woman visits an abortion clinic.
Labor
Maggie Shipstead
September was Louisa’s turn to host. Even though her pregnancy, entering its seventh month, had begun to be burdensome, she was determined to give her friends a proper home-cooked meal
Củ Chi
Marian Palaia
We are in a once-infamous city, which its inhabitants still call Saigon. And it has not rained in months, but tonight it will, and will go more or less unmentioned, but not unnoticed. It will still be hot, but the relief will be palpable.
Poetry
Edward Hopper's New York Office
Victoria Chang
Maybe the letter isn’t from a lover the letter is a layoff letter a lay aside letter / a lay into letter maybe the letter says you are an employee of me and I certainly
Kate Moss,
Mary Emma Koles
I’m telling you, was always like this: her fingers / around a cold glass, asking me if I really thought her lovely.
"The Offer Will Not Be Repeated"
Sandra Beasley
Two men walk on a path. / One has a blade in his pocket. / We do not know if the edge is grimed with paint, or butter, / or is clean as a newborn tongue.
Sailing to Antarctica
Katharine Coles
The problem is the voices / I can’t get out of my head. On the bridge, the captain’s playing / “Break On Through”; he’s been / Playing “Stormy Weather.” Go ahead, Google World’s / Roughest Crossing.
Old Rose
Lisa Russ Spaar
Against black matchsticks, / rotted fangs, / plus and minus, sum lines, mathematics, / the shear, the jabbing jaws / in elbow-high gloves
One to Watch and One to Pray
Camille Dungy
We passed the baby over the bed, and later we passed tissue, / and her Bible with its onion skin pages, its highlighted lessons / and dog-eared parables she kept handy with bookmarks
Essay
Sylvia A. Earle
Why the ocean matters to everyone, everywhere.
Roxane Gay
The struggle for, with, and sometimes against the sisterhood.
Driving My Own Destiny
Manal al-Sharif
Defying the ban on female drivers in Saudi Arabia.
Photo Essays
The River Women of Brazil
Nadia Shira Cohen
At the mouth of the Amazon, there is a long tradition of bartering sex for a taste of modernity.
From Cradle to the Grave: The Making of an Art Activist
Naomi Natale
"I was struck by an irresolvable contradiction: an artistic desire to tell stories through images and a nagging doubt about the effectiveness of my own photography."
Memoir
My Life as a Girl
Stephen Burt
"I’m a man, but I like dressing up as a woman, in women’s clothes, wearing lipstick and bracelets and bright rings and women’s shoes. Given my tastes, at the moment, it might be better to say that I like dressing up as a girl."
My Fight
Deirdre Gogarty and Darrelyn Saloom
At the 2012 Olympic Games, boxing allowed female competitors for the first time. Katie Taylor of Ireland took a gold medal. She was inspired by pioneering Irish boxer and World Champion Deirdre Gogarty. This is the story of how a teenage Gogarty began her fierce ascent when it was still illegal for women to enter the ring.
Book Reviews
How to Write Science
Robin Marantz Henig
A review of The Violinist's Thumb by Sam Kean.
The Kerouac Voice
Mindy Aloff
A review of The Voice Is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac by Joyce Johnson.
By the Wind Grieved
Jonathan Yardley
A review of What There Is to Say We Have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell, edited by Suzanne Marrs.
