Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves

The book "Our Bodies, Ourselves" has sold more than four million copies, gone through six revisions, and inspired more than twenty foreign editions. For more than thirty-five years, the lively, accessible manual on women's health has validated women's authority over their bodies and their own experiences as resources for challenging medical dogma. Within the United States, it has influenced health care policies, energized the reproductive rights movement, and stimulated medical research on women's health. At the same time, it has had a whole life outside the United States. From its inception, the book has been taken up, translated, and adapted by women around the globe. In "The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves", Kathy Davis tells the story of this feminist classic, connecting its history in the United States with its many varied lives abroad. Davis interviewed members of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, the group of women who created "Our Bodies, Ourselves", as well as readers and translators. She draws on those interviews, archival research, and analyses of the various editions of the book to describe how it has changed since it first appeared as an underground stencil in 1970. Material has been added and removed in response to changes in medicine and healthcare, readers' feedback, and a growing concern with differences among women, especially around issues of class, race, and sexuality. Women from Latin America, Egypt, Thailand, China, Eastern Europe, Francophone Africa, and many other countries and regions have translated "Our Bodies, Ourselves". In some instances, they have adapted its contents to make the information accessible and relevant to women of their respective cultures, and in others they have developed new publications inspired by the book. This process - of transforming an American feminist classic to suit local needs around the world - suggests the possibilities for a truly transnational feminism, one that joins the acknowledgment of difference and diversity with critical reflexivity and empowerment.