What might result from hearing a particular song, wearing used clothing, or witnessing an accident? Ethnographic accounts of the Navajo refer repeatedly to the influences of events on health and well-being, yet until now no attempt has been made to clarify the Navajo system of rules governing association and effect. This book focuses on the complex interweaving of the cosmological, social, and bodily realms that Navajo people navigate in an effort alternately to control, contain, or harness the power manifested in various effects. Following the Navajo life-course from conception to puberty, Maureen Trudelle Schwarz explores the complex rules defining who or what can affect what or whom in specific circumstances as a means of determining what these effects tell us about the cultural construction of the human body and personhood for the Navajo. Schwarz shows how oral history informs Navajo conceptions of the body and personhood, showing how these conceptions are central to an ongoing Navajo identity. She treats the vivid narratives of emergence life-origins as compressed metaphorical accounts, rather than as myth, and is thus able to derive from what individual Navajos say about the past their understandings of personhood in a worldview that is actually a viable philosophical system. Working with Navajo religious practitioners, elders, and professional scholars. Schwarz has gained from her informants an unusually firm grasp of the Navajo highlighted by the foregrounding of Navajo voices through excerpts of interviews. These passages enliven the book and present Schwarz and her Navajo consultants as real, multifaceted human beings within the ethnographic context.

Around the world, throughout time, cultures have marked the intimate and transformative events of a woman's life - the onset of puberty, her first sexual experience, conceptian, childbirth, menopause - with myths and rituals. Today, such significant feminine rituals are missing, but these transitions still profoundly affect a woman's body, mind, and soul. Offering a compelling vision of psychotherapy as a sacred space for women's rites of passage, Jungian analyst Virginia Beane Rutter brilliantly illuminates the emotional lives of women. "Woman-to-woman therapy", writes Beane Rutter, "is the ritual container for the lost feminine in our culture". Modeling on intrinsically female pattern of change, woman-to-woman therapy is a process involving stages of containment, transformation, and emergence. It is a place for a woman to uncover and make conscious the motivating stories and myths in her individual psyche. Here, a woman has the opportunity to listen to her own voice perhaps for the first time. With insight and understanding, Beane Rutter connects the practices, myths, and archetypal images of cultures post and present (the Navajo, Neolithic Catal Huyuk, and Ancient Greek) to the life experiences, dreams, and therapeutic processes of three contemporary women. In so doing, she traces the emotional, physical, and spiritual journey of the "cultural heroine" who, through her individual process of initiation, transformation, healing, and self-awareness, courageously takes up the task of all women.

While great strides have been made in documenting discrimination against women in America, our awareness of discrimination is due in large part to the efforts of a feminist movement dominated by middle-class white women, and is skewed to their experiences. Yet discrimination against racial ethnic women is in fact dramatically different--more complex and more widespread--and without a window into the lives of racial ethnic women our understanding of the full extent of discrimination against all women in America will be woefully inadequate. Now, in this illuminating volume, Karen Anderson offers the first book to examine the lives of women in the three main ethnic groups in the United States--Native American, Mexican American, and African American women--revealing the many ways in which these groups have suffered oppression, and the profound effects it has had on their lives. Here is a thought-provoking examination of the history of racial ethnic women, one which provides not only insight into their lives, but also a broader perception of the history, politics, and culture of the United States. For instance, Anderson examines the clash between Native American tribes and the U.S. government (particularly in the plains and in the West) and shows how the forced acculturation of Indian women caused the abandonment of traditional cultural values and roles (in many tribes, women held positions of power which they had to relinquish), subordination to and economic dependence on their husbands, and the loss of meaningful authority over their children. Ultimately, Indian women were forced into the labor market, the extended family was destroyed, and tribes were dispersed from the reservation and into the mainstream--all of which dramatically altered the woman's place in white society and within their own tribes. The book examines Mexican-American women, revealing that since U.S. job recruiters in Mexico have historically focused mostly on low-wage male workers, Mexicans have constituted a disproportionate number of the illegals entering the states, placing them in a highly vulnerable position. And even though Mexican-American women have in many instances achieved a measure of economic success, in their families they are still subject to constraints on their social and political autonomy at the hands of their husbands. And finally, Anderson cites a wealth of evidence to demonstrate that, in the years since World War II, African-American women have experienced dramatic changes in their social positions and political roles, and that the migration to large urban areas in the North simply heightened the conflict between homemaker and breadwinner already thrust upon them. Changing Woman provides the first history of women within each racial ethnic group, tracing the meager progress they have made right up to the present. Indeed, Anderson concludes that while white middle-class women have made strides toward liberation from male domination, women of color have not yet found, in feminism, any political remedy to their problems.

We live in a time of unprecedented change when it comes to women's lives. All around the world, women are demanding the safety, respect, and opportunities they have always deserved but seldom grasped. Have you ever stopped to wonder, "Where do I fit into this story?" Ronne Rock is a good person to ask. In this stirring book, she takes you on a global adventure to discover your divine design as a woman of influence and impact. Through powerful and personal stories of women in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Caribbean, you'll learn what it means to lead in a world where leadership isn't easy, how to serve with grace in cultures that aren't always graceful, and how to embrace your God-given physical, emotional, and spiritual DNA. As you discover the lives of real women who are influencing their communities with grace and gumption--even in countries where oppression weighs most heavily--you'll feel inspired to reclaim your God-designed influence and impact right where you are.

Describes the traditional coming-of-age ceremony for young Apache women, in which they use special dances and prayers to reenact the Apache story of creation and celebrate the power of Changing Woman, the legendary ancestor of their people.

Doing anything 'like a woman' used to be an insult. Now, as the women in this book show, it means being brave, speaking out, and taking risks, changing the world one step at a time. Here, campaigner and journalist Caroline Criado-Perez introduces us to a host of pioneers, including a female fighter pilot in Afghanistan; a Chilean revolutionary; the Russian punks who rocked against Putin; and the Iranian journalist who uncovered her hair.

An illustrated collection of traditional tales which feature goddesses from different cultures, including Navajo, Mayan, and Fon. Notes explain each goddess's place in her culture, the reason for the book, and how the illustrations were developed.