V (formerly Eve Ensler): Reckoning with Our Past, Transforming the Future (February 2023)
“Reckoning” is the new best-selling book from V (formerly Eve Ensler), author of “The Vagina Monologues” and founder of V-Day/One Billion Rising, the global movement to end violence against all women, gender-expansive people, girls, and the earth. Reckoning, writes V, is “the antidote to fascism”. In this Women’s History Month special, which includes performances by V and Laurence Olivier Award-winning actress and Tony nominee, Noma Dumezweni, Laura speaks with V about why she changed her name, her long history working for peace, the current pushback against teaching African American history, and the abortion she had at the age of 23 when she was living in a halfway home. What is the reckoning we need, and where can it lead us? What happens if we do NOT reckon? “. . . There was no way I could bring up a child, and that child would’ve been destroyed. I realized that I could make a decision not to have that child. That was literally the first time in my life that I went and I made a choice about my own body.” – V (formerly Eve Ensler) “We are living in a patriarchal paradigm . . . but it wasn’t always here . . . It requires imagination for all of us to say, is this racist, patriarchal paradigm, the paradigm we choose to live in for eternity? Or do we want to live in a different paradigm and are we going to struggle to dismantle it? – V (formerly Eve Ensler)