My dear friend V (formerly Eve Ensler) has a new book out this week that I hope you will add to your reading lists.
Like many of us, V found that the pandemic offered her a unique opportunity to pause and reflect. "I think what Covid did for those of us who were privileged enough not to be on the front lines working in hospitals and restaurants, is lock us in with ourselves—with our minds, with our past, with our ghosts, with our memories," she told writer Marianne Schnell in a recent interview.
"It was this intense period, for me at any rate, of deep reflection, looking at the world inside me and the one outside of me. And I started to think, maybe this is the time to look at my work over these last 45 years and try to see, what are the themes? What are the things I've been preoccupied with and what are the various forms of writing I have used to reckon with them — poetry, articles, monologues, letters. Would there be value in bringing them together?"
The result is Reckoning, a new book that reveals the various reckonings of V’s journey as a writer, playwright, and activist. In this collection of her writings, she compels us, the readers fortunate now to take the journey with her, to remember, reflect deeply, and yes, to reckon with our own stories.
Reckoning is available now, and I urge you to read it.
I first met V in 1997. I was leading the documentary division at Turner Broadcasting and CNN and received a call from actor Glenn Close, whom I knew from serving on the Sundance Institute board together. She practically shouted into the phone: “You have to come to Sarajevo this weekend to see a play that Eve Ensler wrote about the Bosnian rape victims.”
I knew about the rape camps set up during war, and that fragile peace agreements between the Serbs and Croats had been signed. I didn’t know Eve Ensler. But something compelled me to accept Glenn’s invitation — more of a command, really! — for CNN to report on the play and the circumstances under which it was being performed, with survivors of the violence sharing their stories in the play. After riding around war-torn Sarajevo, my crew and I arrived at the National Theater. A small sign advertising the play was affixed to the building next to a hole in the wall, an artifact of the war. We stumbled into the darkened theater to find Glenn and a woman I assumed was V, directing a group of Bosnian women through a rehearsal.
From that first hello, I knew I had met a powerful force… and ever since that day, I have had the privilege of being her friend and participating in and supporting the work of VDAY, the global movement working to end violence against women, gender expansive people, girls, and the planet, which she launched soon after that Sarajevo introduction.
With The Vagina Monologues, as a playwright and performer, V transformed the personal stories of survivors of sexual violence into a history making book and play, and launched the first ever global movement to end violence founded and fueled by the power of one play and one writer/performer/activist’s commitment to using all of her writing, her words, her time, talent, and resources, to activate and support the work to end violence against women and girls everywhere.
V and I at the City of Joy in Bukavu, Congo. Since opening its doors in 2011, nearly 2,000 women have graduated from the City of Joy, a community that heals, nurtures, teaches, and inspires survivors of the horrific sexual violence in Eastern Congo to become the leaders needed to make the transformational changes in their villages and country.
As I recounted in my memoir, Becoming a Dangerous Woman:
"Eve launched a global movement with a star-studded Broadway performance of The Vagina Monologues on Valentine’s Day, which she proclaimed to be V-Day. What followed was a movement built on the rights to perform The Vagina Monologues anywhere by any group for no fee beyond a commitment to use the funds raised to support groups in the community or country working to end gender-based violence.
Working with V and supporting V-Day’s programs and activities has taken me to places I might never have gone, from Afghanistan to the Congo. Through this work, I have met women who have transformed pain into power, who have survived unspeakable violence to rebuild families and hold communities together."
With V and Joy Williams at City of Joy in Bukavi, Congo.
This month, V-Day commemorates V25, its 25th anniversary of activism, advocacy and organizing led by survivors, artists and activists around the world.
For 25 years, V-Day has worked at the intersection of arts and activism to shatter taboos, create space for women and the most marginalized, and initiate community-led culture and change in more than 200 countries. Raising over $120 million dollars for grassroots anti-violence groups, rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, and safe houses, V-Day has impacted the way activists create community and create change on a global scale.
There are many, many events, actions and other activities happening this month in celebration of V25. You can find out more at the V-Day website. I hope you will join us and take action this month.
The driving forces behind V25 are two new pieces of art that help center the stories and experiences of women: Reckoning and VOICES.
VOICES is a new interdisciplinary audio play by poet/organizer and V-Day Artistic Creative Director Aja Monet that is grounded in Black women’s stories from the African continent and diaspora. Premiering late last year in Accra, Ghana, VOICES partnered with more than 30 local organizations and now stands as a seminal art-based organizing tool for local leaders in the same way The Vagina Monologues has. VOICES is slated to premiere in the United States in 2023.
For those of you interested in seeing V read from Reckoning, I've posted the dates for her book tour below. You can also listen to her talk about the book in this great interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour from earlier this week.
In her conversation with Christiane, V talked about the incredible progress that has been made over the past 25 years of the V-Day movement and the fact that some of that progress has been rolled back, particularly during the pandemic. "This is a global situation," she says. "There is no country in the world that I've been to, except perhaps Sweden, where women are not essentially second-class citizens, where we are not respected, where we are not honored, and where we are not doing all the work of keeping that culture and that society together."
"Women around the world have to unite now. We have to rise up. We have to demand and we have to be bolder. And I think we need to be more outrageous in the way we are demanding things. …We are the majority of people on this planet."
I’ve learned so much through my relationship with V over these 25+ years, and in fact, if I have become ‘dangerous’ in any way – it’s because V showed me the true definition of dangerous: to be brave enough to act on what you believe; to speak up against injustice experienced or witnessed; to speak out about the need for fairer, more equal representation in every place where decisions are made about women’s lives; and to always, always show up for each other.
As V has said — words I passionately support: "Don't be afraid to stand up and say what you feel. We need everybody's voice right now. We need everybody's vitality right now. We need everybody's action. …We've got to build a new world, so we need everybody involved in this story."
Onward!
- Pat
