Womankind: Faces of Change Around the World

Marie T. Gillis is a member of the Angus L. Macdonald Library staff at
St. Francis Xavier University.

How, in a brief review, can one do justice to a work like Womankind? Is
it enough to say that the book is a series of short essays about female
activists throughout the world? Hardly. Is it enough to point out that
the essays are accompanied by photographs that capture the
personalities—indeed, the souls—of the women involved? Better, but
still… Is it enough to say that the stories these women tell will
bring you to tears, will make you despair of the world in which we live,
but will also bring you back to hope because women like these exist?

That will have to be enough, because that is what this wondrous book
does. The two- to four-page essays introduce us to 45 women, each one
touched by tragedy, each one fighting back in her own way. From Anisia
K. Achieng, an advocate for peace in the Sudan, to Leslie deBeauvais,
who founded the Theatre of Hope for abused women in Los Angeles; from
Nathalie Geismar Bonnemains, a member of Les Mиres en Colиre (Angry
Mothers), fighting against a nuclear-waste facility in Cherbourg,
France, to Olayinka Koso-Thomas, who is resolved to stop the genital
mutilation of girls in her home country of Sierra Leone; from Zodwa
Mqadi, who runs Agape, an orphanage for the children of AIDS victims in
South Africa, to Kim Pate, who speaks out for imprisoned women in
Canada—these women are humbling examples of what determination and
love for your fellow human being can accomplish.

The text by Donna Nebenzahl is quietly powerful; the photographs by
Nance Ackerman add depth and beauty to these stories. One looks into the
faces of these women and sees their lives in their eyes. One looks away
with a different perspective on the world.

Read this book.