Vagina Monologues: The V-Day Edition by Eve Ensler

From the Publisher

A poignant and hilarious tour of the last frontier, the ultimate forbidden zone, The Vagina Monologues is a celebration of female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery. Hailed as the bible for a new generation of women, it has been performed in cities all across America and at hundreds of college campuses, and has inspired a dynamic grassroots movement—V-Day—to stop violence against women. Witty and irreverent, compassionate and wise, Eve Ensler's Obie Award-winning masterpiece gives voice to real women's deepest fantasies and fears, guaranteeing that no one who reads it will ever look at a woman's body, or think of sex, in quite the same way again.

NY Times

If Ms. Ensler is the messiah heralding the second wave of feminism, and a lot of people think she is, it is partly because she's a brilliant comedian...The audience...was overwhelmingly adoring.

NY Newsday

The most exhilarating part is, no kidding, her extremely virtuosic way with a series of orgasmic moans...Ensler, a writer-performer with a good-natured but seriously evangelical mission about this body part, must be enjoying her success in getting the word out on such a legendarily unmentionable, mythologized and misunderstood fact of life...

A.P.

Ensler breaks taboos by talking, talking and talking some more—stripping fear and shame from what she celebrates here. It makes for quite a party. Funny, outrageous, emotionally affecting, and occasionally angry...THE VAGINA MONOLGOUES confront words to demystify and disarm them. In so doing, Ensler disarms the audience too.

Sara Kelly

For some of us, a little vagina goes a long way. Most of us, however, are not Eve Ensler, the woman behind The Vagina Monologues. For Ensler, not even the limits of the human constitution can keep a determined vagina down. And that, in essence, is the point of this literary adaptation of her Obie-winning one-woman show. Assembled in seemingly random fashion from interviews with "a diverse group of over two hundred women about their vaginas," the monologues, their author contends, are for our own good. The intent is purely missionary -- to reclaim the much-maligned "vagina" for women the same way the gay community has reclaimed the term "queer."

It is with great pride and purpose that Ensler invokes the "V" word. Like a precocious child, she repeats those telltale three syllables guaranteed to get a rise out of the grown-ups. "I say 'vagina,'" she explains, "because I want people to respond." And they respond, she says, because they know they shouldn't. Since learning the word's liberating power for herself as an adult, Ensler has hardly tired of its cryptic joys. "I say it in my sleep," she boasts. "I say it because I'm not supposed to say it. I say it because it's an invisible word -- a word that stirs up anxiety, awkwardness, contempt and disgust."

The Vagina Monologues is comprised of roughly 15 thematically linked pieces (the number varies depending on whether you count the "vagina facts," dedications, explanations and musings that punctuate the interviews). A foreword by Gloria Steinem attempts to connect the vagina with the core beliefs of world religions (i.e., Tantra's central tenet is man's inability to reach spiritual fulfillment except through sexual and emotional union with woman's superior sexual energy). Doubtless, Monologues suffers in translation from performance piece to text. But to help ease the transition, Ensler has appended a few paragraphs of context to most selections.

Two, "Jewish Queens accent" and "English accent," are introduced with a semblance of stage directions. Others launch directly into diary entries or unbroken lists of interviewees' responses to Ensler's questions. "If your vagina could talk, what would it say?" asks the author. "If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?" "What does a vagina smell like?" The responses range from pithy to banal. "Yum, yum," "Oh, yeah" and "Is that you?" say interviewees who mentally dress their "sexy"- and "wet garbage"-smelling vaginas in everything from "a pinafore" to "a slicker."

The Vagina Monologues is by turns confessional and voyeuristic. It's hard to know, for instance, just how to respond to the tragic tale of a Bosnian rape camp survivor ("... they took turns for seven days ... smelling like feces and smoked meat, they left their dirty sperm inside me ...") when juxtaposed with a vignette about a woman who experienced her first orgasm in a hands-on tutorial called "The Vagina Workshop" ("I felt connection, calling connection as I lay there thrashing about on my little blue mat ..."). Ensler is, at the very least, egalitarian in achieving her mission. She treats such subjects as lesbian sex, birth, rape and child abuse with equal candor and respect. Whether her evenhanded treatment of such conflicting subjects shortchanges both is a matter best left to sex researchers and therapists. -- Salon

Library Journal

Having been performed in 20 cities and on 200 campuses, the Obie Award-winning Vagina Monologues is here updated with testimonials and three new monoogs. Necessary Targets, which concerns violence against women during the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina, has already played with all-star casts on Broadway and in Sarajevo. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Reading Group Guide
• Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Reading Group Guide

1. The Vagina Monologues is based on interviews that Eve Ensler did with hundreds of real women. Is there a particular monologue or part of a monologue that you feel is relevant to your OWN life or experience?

2. Despite the fact that The Vagina Monologues is rooted in real people's experiences, are there any aspects of the "characters'" stories that don't ring true to you? Do you think the play reads more like fiction or non-fiction?

3. Which is your favorite monologue and why?

4. In her introduction to The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler writes "Vagina. There, I've said it. Vagina — said it again." The word "vagina" is used more than 100 times in The Vagina Monologues. How comfortable do you feel saying the word? Would you be willing to have "a vagina interview?" Do you think most women are comfortable talking about their vaginas?

5. The Vagina Monologues has been presented as a commercial production in many cities in the United States and abroad, sometimes with Eve Ensler as the performer, sometimes with trios of well-known actresses and personalities as the performers, and sometimes with more than a dozen female performers. Which manifestation of the play as a performance do you think would serve it best? And are there places in the world where you think the play would NOT be well-received? If so, why?

6. The Vagina Monologues has also been the centerpiece of hundreds of non-commercial events worldwide through its use in V-Day, a movement to stop violenceagainst women. For example, for three years, the V-Day College Initiative has been inviting colleges and universities to mount productions of The Vagina Monologues on their campuses on V-Day (Valentine's Day). Almost 500 schools around the world have participated in this project to date. ALL V-Day events use The Vagina Monologues as a tool to raise money and awareness to stop sexual violence. Proceeds from the events go to local, national and international organizations already working to stop violence against women. Do you think this is an effective use of the play? Where in the world do you believe such a production would be welcomed? Needed? Criticized?

7. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics' 1996 National Crime Victimization Survey, somewhere in America, a woman is raped every 2 minutes. Campus Outreach Services reports that every 21 hours on each college campus in the United States there is a rape. Morocco's Penal Code states that murder, injury and beating are excusable if they are committed by a husband on his wife (as well as the accomplice at the moment) if he catches them in the act of adultery. The Feminist Majority describes the inhumane situation for women in Afghanistan: Upon seizing power in Afghanistan in 1996, the Taliban, an extremist militia, instituted a system of "gender apartheid" that stripped women and girls of their basic human rights and effectively thrust them into a state of virtual house arrest. Women are prohibited from leaving their homes unless accompanied by a close male relative. And they are forced to wear burqas, garments that cover their bodies from head to toe with only a small opening through which to see. These are just two of many such humiliations and horrors that women suffer in Afghanistan. Women are beaten and often killed for failing to adhere to the rules that govern them. How aware are you of the problem of violence against women in your community? In your state? In your country? In the world? How aware do think others are?

8. Numerous organizations offer information and support to educate people about and to fight violence against women, including V-Day, the Feminist Majority, Equality Now and Planned Parenthood, among many others. Do you think people are aware that such resources exist and do you think they are utilized?

9. How do you think both men and women would benefit from reading or seeing the play? What reactions do you think people of each sex have to it?

10. Do you think the play is relevant to people of all ages and ethnicities?

Read an Excerpt