Desire: Women Write about Wanting

by Lisa Solod Warren

A captivating collection of essays, Desire delves headfirst into its subject matter and explores the complexity of desire with essays about the things women want, crave, lust after, and covet. An... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1580052142
• ISBN13: 9781580052146
• Release Date: November 2007
• Publisher: Seal Press (CA)
• Length: 301 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Amazing Collection of Essays!

Reading this book was such an adventure from start to finish. The order in which Lisa Warren organizes the essays is perfect. I am in my early twenties and it was like I was getting a glimpse into my crystal ball. I am getting married in a few weeks and reading this was so much more beneficial than any of those mumbo-jumbo marital counseling sessions that everyone insists you endure. I would read one essay every night before going to bed and bombard my fiancé with a million what-if questions. It opened my/our eyes to the emotions and struggles that I will inevitably face in the decades to come. The essays explore the uncertainty and insecurity of each decade, staring from our teens. It's got it all - love, sex, marriage, divorce, pregnancy, aging . . . My sister, mom and grandmother ALL thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is by no means a touchy, feely book. It's blunt and harsh, but it's so refreshing that these women are putting it all out there! It is a perfect collection of life's imperfections - I highly recommend it.

Wonderful essays on wanting

Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (6/08) "Desire: Women Write About Wanting" is an outstanding collection of essays by modern-day female writers. Edited by Lisa Solod Warren, this lineup of fantastic stories opens our eyes to the great range of emotions and desires each of us possibly carries within. Brave and smart, challenging our perceptions of what a woman could and would desire at a particular stage in life, these stories make the reader pause and think repeatedly. While it would be unlikely -- or better yet, quite impossible for a reader to find herself in each of the twenty-three stories within "Desire," I am willing to bet that each of us will be able to connect on a very intimate level with at least a handful of them, since they encompass a great range of emotions and desires. Some of them are more intimate than others, some are downright daring and others yet make your eyes mist with the deep emotions they invoke. All of them are worthwhile reading and all of them try to answer the very challenging question about that it is that we really, truly, deeply and madly want and/or desire. Reading this brilliant collection of essays should make everybody question where they are in their lives at the moment and whether they have done all that was possible to attain their dreams and desires, whatever they might be. "Desire: Women Write About Wanting" should be required reading for all women of legal age -- since there are a few rather graphic pages in the book, which would not be suitable for very young readers. This book is to inspire, a book to make us dream, a book to make us question the world and our place in it and on top of all of that, just plain good reading. Grab a copy for yourself and a couple for other women in your life!

Ride this engaging "streetcar" to the very end

This collection of essays on desire is a beautiful and challenging ride through the multi-form manifestations that desire takes in the lives of women. From love and sex to success and acclaim to religion and the desire to help others (and even a desire for a kind of Zen "desirelessness"), I am impressed at the high quality of writing and the courage and candor these writers muster on the page. These are not merely sentimental, pornographic, angry, dreamy, or weepy essays (all of which are fragmented emotions). They seem to spring from a place of emotional maturity where the fragments have been merged by trials of living into that one elemental "emotion-which-contains-all-emotions" that is the "Desire" of the book's focus. Reading them as a man, I'm taken with how the range of essays spans what poet Gary Snyder calls the three manifestations of the goddess: daughters, lovers/wives/friends, and mothers, and how the exigencies of each stage impact, imprint, or alter one's desire in specific and moving ways or moments in time. It's so hard to write well about sex, yet Fair, Bussel, and Baechler, for instance, create witty, graphic, and unapologetic characterizations of physical love. Baechler's essay wonderfully reveals our desire to push the limits of taboos during sex in viable and non-violent ways. It skillfully portrays the roles of fantasy and experimentation in our desire for physical expression and release. Daniell's essay reminds me of Lawrence's image of marriage as a binary star where the stars must remain in delicate balance or one will be subsumed into the other or one may fly off into space forever. The essays about motherhood by Oxnard and Leiter reveal the desire for creation of life itself and how age and circumstance affect it. Finally, Bucholt's essay about the death of a dear friend shows the awe-inspiring and awful heights of emotion we go through in our desire to understand the soul and the injustice of losing someone we love. This is a moving collection.

Desire is in the Eye of the Reader

Having the distinct honor of knowing two of the writers featured in the first section, "Of the Body," I had to rush at the chance to write a review. My expectations were met far beyond what I could have ever imagined. The entire collection covers essays "Of the Body," "Of the Soul," and "For the Real." One essay in particular covers sexual taboos without being overtly X-rated, all within the mind of the sexy protagonist, who goes back and forth between her "Regular Guy" and her fantasies. Reading the essay is like diving headfirst into a Disney film for adults, with enchanting colorful images and irresistible aromas. Connie Baechler unleashes the taboos many women are still too embarrassed to mention without the "yes, buts" going through their heads. Another piece I thoroughly enjoyed was Rachel Kramer Bussel's deconstruction of female desire in "Where Sluts Fear to Tread." This hit immediately in the vein of what is slutty versus what is sexy, and Bussel does an amazing job trying to figure out her place in the melee. Lastly, not to be missed is Jane Juska's piece,"Younger than Winter," on trying to retain sexiness as you get older. Very honest and very funny, I gobbled it right up. I truly cannot wait to finish the entire collection. Warren has done an excellent job in choosing essays that are erotic, funny and intelligent, making for a truly thought-provoking collection. After thumbing through the second and third section, I know I'll be more than satisfied. -A. Barton www.ashleygraceless.com

A terrific collection!

Lisa Solod Warren has produced a vividly lush collection of writings with many talented contributors. At turns funny, poignant and philosophical, these biographical essays--Psyche's crystalline shards--make an extraordinary book. Desire reads as a beautiful mix of elegy and ode to the institutions of marriage and intimacy, among others, redolent with wisdom gleaned the hard way, and the beauty that brings. Warren has done a great service to the term Desire and has filled in the portrait of feminism with more richness. I will be revisiting these essays, in search of the exquisitely turned phrases and the wealth of contrasts, and the rare, forceful honesty, the complexity of mixed feelings in high contrast. I will be gifting this volume to many of the women in my life.