When Eve Ensler first put on her play The Vagina Monologues, she set off a reckoning on the part of women all over the world with the violence and oppression that they had experienced at the hands of a patriarchal system.

She went on to meet with women victims of the violence of war—in Kosovo, Congo and elsewhere—and hear their stories of horrific abuse. But also to witness their courage and their creation of communities of resilience.

Then Ensler came to a reckoning of her own—with the horrific abuse she had suffered as a child as the hands of her father. We spoke with her about her book about that personal reckoning, The Apology, in 2019.

Now, she’s renamed herself “V”—her “freedom name”, as she calls it— and she’s come out with Reckoning, a powerful collection of writings that sum up the personal and political reckonings with patriarchy she has been making throughout her long career.