This review comes to GWP courtesy of Jenny Block, author of Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage.  You can read more about Jenny’s work at www.jennyonthepage.com

My Little Red Book
Edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff
Twelve (Feb. 2009)

I wanted to like this book. I really did. I love the idea of it, women sharing stories about something that we’re not “supposed to” share stories about. The problem is that without stories from every corner of the globe, every generation, every rung of the socioeconomic ladder, and so on, what you end up with is redundancy.

And that is precisely the problem with Rachel Kauder Nalebuff’s My Little Red Book, I’m afraid. The material would certainly be terrific for an article, preferably written by a remarkable writer gifted with profound insight. And there certainly are a few pieces that were wonderful, like Patty Marx’s curt “Can I Just Skip This Period?” and Ellen Devine’s raw and humorous “Hot Dog on a String.” But for the most part, the pieces were generally the same.

I understand that that’s the glory of it all. This is a shared experience. But this is one case where a little more telling and a little less showing would have gone a long way. I kept thinking I had lost my page and was reading pieces I had already read.  I get why people are buying and reading this book. It’s the only thing out there. It’s cute. It’s empowering to buy, to carry, to talk about. But as far as reading, it was a bore.

I know, I know, I’ve seen the Amazon rankings, the media coverage, and the reviews, but all of that speaks to the power of press more than the strength of the book. Lots of things that aren’t particularly good are terribly popular. And once one person signs on, well, you remember the naked Emperor of fairy tale fame…

I believe Nalebuff’s heart was very much in the right place in compiling this. And that is what she has done, compile. The intro doesn’t offer the meaty exploration I had hoped for. This is one of those projects that absolutely deserves to be done but that was simply a matter of who got there first.

I actually have a seventy-something colleague who has been collecting stories of first periods for years. She was waiting to go to a publisher until she had enough of what she called “representation.” She saw no point in publishing story after story that all read exactly the same. That point could be made in the introduction in a sentence or two with a quote or excerpt from a few stories she has collected.

She wanted instead to speak not just to the universality of women and their experiences, but also to the remarkable differences, the amazing triumphs, the devastating defeats, and the fact that so much of that can be translated through how we tell out period stories. And the “sprinkle in diversity and stir” method that Nalebuff employs simply does not do the trick.

I don’t remember getting my period. I don’t remember being happy or sad, early or late, celebrated or shunned. I remember my father chucking me on the shoulder and saying, “Way to go, kid.” My own daughter will be ten at the end of April. We talk all the time about when she will get her period and what that means and how it works. It’s a vital part of our lives as women. It’s an incredible shared experience. I understand that. But stories about it are only worthy of publication in a book when they have something to offer, something to say, something new, something universal. Something. I found this collection, in a word, frustrating.

I taught college composition for 10 years. I’ve read a zillion essays. Had Nalebuff come to me with this book, I would have asked her what I asked so many of them – So what? Why you? Why now? Where’s the universal? The big picture? The reason we should care? What does story one have to offer that story two does not? And so on.

Everyone lost the big game, dropped all their books in the hall, got stood up for the dance, lost someone they loved. All of those stories are incredibly important to the people to whom they belong and the people directly affected by the events. But in order to warrant sharing them outside of one’s journal or family Christmas letter, they have to speak to all of us about that which has not be spoken. Or it has to be spoken in a new way. Think David Sedaris, Anne Lamott, Susan Cheever.

The proceeds from this book are going to help young women in a number of ways, including providing private toilets and sanitary supplies to girls in Kenya so that they can still go to school even during the weeks when they have their periods. Because of that, I am delighted the book is doing well. But also because of that, I know people will be offended by this review. But a worthy topic and an equally worthy cause do not a worthy book make, from a literary point of view.

My Little Red Book is a fast read. Savoring the ones I mentioned above as well as those by Katie Zieman, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Gloria Steinem, Kathi Kovacic, and Meg Cabot are certainly worth your while. But this is surface work of a subject that is anything but. Without digging deep, there is nothing to discover. Without a spectrum, there is nothing to explore.

—Jenny Block