The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels Across Borders

“[A] smart, sensitive, hopeful book. . . . [A] brilliant defense of the Second Wave premise that sisterhood really is global.”     -- Rebecca Walker, Bookforum Researcher and writer Kathy Davis' new book, The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels Across Borders, tells the stories behind the many foreign language adaptations of Our Bodies, Ourselves.  Published in October 2007 by Duke University Press, the book is based on interviews with founders of the BWHBC, responses to the book from international readers, and discussions with translators from Latin America, Egypt, Thailand, China, Eastern Europe, and Francophone Africa.

You can find out more about the book at the Duke University website. You can also download the concluding chapter of the book, Transnational Knowledges, Transnational Politics, as well as Feminist Body/Politics as World Traveller: Translating Our Bodies Ourselves, an earlier article by Davis on the same topic.

UPDATE: Kathy Davis was recently awarded the 2008 Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association Section Sex and Gender for her book. This award honors those who make a significant contribution to the field of sex and gender through a book on the cutting edge of sociological inquiry. Congratulations, Kathy!

A note from the founders of the BWHBC:

The Founders of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective deeply appreciate the wonderful contribution that Kathy Davis has made with her book about "Our Bodies, Ourselves" and its journey into other regions of the world. In the near future, the Founders will gather some important facts about the history of the organization to add to the OBOS website (and hopefully, some of these facts will be added to future editions of Kathy's book as well). In the meantime, there is one addition that we would like to mention here:
 
On page 92, the book notes that staff members Sally Whelan and Pamela Morgan were invited to become members of the BWHBC (still a collective) by the early 1980s. Staff member Elizabeth MacMahon-Herrera, the coordinator for Amigas Latinas en Accion por Salud, also became a member of the BWHBC during that time. As the text notes, the establishment of an official "Founders" group took place in 1996, as the organization evolved into a more traditional non-profit group with a community board of directors (most of whom did not also serve on the staff). At that time -- marking their 15+ years of dedicated work in helping the organization grow and in advancing and disseminating feminist women’s health information -- Sally, Pamela, and Elizabeth were formally recognized as Founders of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, joining the eleven original authors of OBOS in the Founder group.