ヴァギナ・モノローグ [単行本]

200人以上の女性に自らの女性器について語ってもらい、それをもとに著者が演じた一人芝居は大反響を呼んだが、芝居から新たに書き起こされた本書も、その衝撃的な力で全米を感動させた。

女性たちよ、あなたたちの性器の名をはっきりと口にしよう。そしてそれについて考えよう。なぜならそれは、あなたたちのいちばん大切な部分、あなたたちの心なのだから。最後のタブーを破り、全米に感動の渦をまき起こした問題作。

200人以上の女性に自らの女性器について語ってもらい、それをもとに書かれた一人語り形式の芝居。その舞台を元にして、コメント、様々な問いかけとそれに対する女性たちの答えなどをモノローグで集めて一冊にまとめる。

"I say vagina because I want people to respond," says playwright Eve Ensler, creator of the hilarious, disturbing soliloquies in The Vagina Monologues, a book based on her one-woman play. And respond they do--with horror, anger, censure, and sparks of wonder and pleasure. Ensler is on a fervent mission to elevate and celebrate this much mumbled-about body part. She asked hundreds of women of all ages a series of questions about their vaginas (What do you call it? How would you dress it?) that prompt some wondrous answers. Standouts among the euphemisms are tamale, split knish, choochi snorcher, Gladys Siegelman--Gladys Siegelman?--and, of course, that old standby "down there." "Down there?" asks a composite character springing from several older women. "I haven't been down there since 1953. No, it had nothing to do with [American president] Eisenhower." Two of the most powerful pieces include a jagged poem stitched together from the memories of a Bosnian woman raped by soldiers and an American woman sexually abused as a child who reclaims her vagina as a place of wild joy.
--このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

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.
--このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

"Women have entrusted Eve with their most intimate experiences, from sex to birthing. . . . I think readers, men as well as women, will emerge from these pages feeling more free within themselves—and about each other." —Gloria Steinem

"Eve Ensler is the Pied Piper. She is leading women and the world to a different
consciousness of the essence of women." —Gillian Anderson

"I feel my life has changed. You don't just hook up with Eve, you become part of her crusade. There's a corps of us who are Eve's army." —Glenn Close

"The monologues are part of Eve Ensler's crusade to wipe out the shame and embarrassment that many women still associate with their bodies or their sexuality. . . . They are both a celebration of women's sexuality and a condemnation of its violation."
—The New York Times

"Spellbinding, funny, and almost unbearably moving. . . . Written with a bluntness that is nevertheless intensely lyrical, it is both a work of art and an incisive piece of cultural history, a poem and a polemic, a performance and a balm and a benediction." —Variety

"Frank, humorous and moving . . . a compelling rhapsody of the female essence. Ultimately, Ensler achieves something extraordinary." —Chicago Tribune


From the Hardcover edition. --このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

"Women have entrusted Eve with their most intimate experiences, from sex to birthing. . . . I think readers, men as well as women, will emerge from these pages feeling more free within themselves--and about each other."         --Gloria Steinem

"Spellbinding, funny, and almost unbearably moving . . . it is both a work of art and an incisive piece of cultural history, a poem and a polemic, a performance and a balm and a benediction."         --Variety

"Often wrenching, frequently riotous. . . . Ensler is an impassioned wit." --Los Angeles Times

"A compelling rhapsody of the female essence. . . . Ultimately Ensler achieves something extraordinary.
--このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

EVE ENSLER is an award-winning playwright, poet, activist, and screenwriter whose many works for the stage include The Depot, Floating Rhoda and the Glue Man, Extraordinary Measures, Lemonade, Ladies, and, most recently, Necessary Targets, which was performed on Broadway to benefit Bos-nian women refugees. She has presented her off-Broadway hit The Vagina Monologues (winner of the 1997 Obie Award) at theaters and universities around the United States, as well as in Jerusalem, London, and Zagreb. She is currently writing a screenplay on women in prison for Glenn Close at Miramax and a new play for the Music Theater Group. An in-structor in the graduate Dramatic Writing Pro-gram at New York University, she lives in New York City with her partner, Ariel Orr Jordan. --このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

エンスラー,イヴ
ニューヨーク在住の劇作家・女優。本書のもとになった一人芝居The Vagina Monologuesはブロードウェイで大反響を呼び、オビー賞を受賞、その後も世界各地で上演されている

岸本 佐知子
1960年生。上智大学文学部英文科卒。アメリカ文学専攻(本データはこの書籍が刊行された当時に掲載されていたものです)