Anne Michael

Skin Divers is a dazzling collection of new poems which explores an inner world fluid with emotion and feeling. These poems reveal complex climates of emotion and sentiment while remaining unsparing and unsentimental.

Edwidge Danticat

The Farming of Bones is a devastating and beautiful novel that looks at love, dignity, pain and memory. It is an evocative prose that skillfully treads the path between oppression and grace.

GIFT ITEMS

Kiyana Sakena Horton

Record you deepest most private thoughts in this beautifully laid out journal with inspirational quotes from countless phenomenal women including: Coretta Scott King, Alice Walker, Oprah Winfrey and many others.

Peter Pauper Press Inc. $16.95

Sark

This book looks at the importance of napping. Sark shows how napping provides an atmosphere of safety and kindness for the interior.

Simon & Schuster $14.75 Hardcover

Lynn Gordon

Feed your creativity with 52 little bits of inspiration. These portable cards are perfect for: Blocked writers, budding Michealangelos, established artistes etc.

Chronicle Books $11.50

POETRY

Lillian Allen

This book roams around the complex psychic territory of the social world, melting and meshing borders. Ebbing and flowing through the North American cultural landscape and the African diaspora, these poems flood the banks of politics, lap at love and crash on the shores of African ancestry.

Insomniac Press $12.99 Paper

FICTION

Isabel Allende

Daughter of Fortune is a sweeping portrait of an era, a story rich in characters, history, violence and compassion. In Eliza, Allende has created her most appealing heroine, an independent-minded unconventional young woman who has the courage to re-invent herself and create her own destiny in a new country.

Harper Collins $39.50 Hardcover

This book tells the charming offbeat story of Meena, the daughter of the only Punjabi family in the British village of Tollington. With great warmth and humor, Meera Syal brings to life a quirky, spirited 1960s mining town and creates in her protagonist, a "female Huck Finn."

The New Press $20.95 Paper

Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible is a novel of character, shaped by keen women contemplating themselves and one another and a village whose familiarity it takes a tragedy to discover.

Harper Collins $20.95 Paper

Ruth L. Ozeki

When documentarian Jane Takagi-Little finally lands a job producing a Japanese television show sponsored by an American meat exporting business, she discovers some unsavory truths about love, fertility and a hormone called DES. A mesmerizing, captivating debut novel.

Penguin Books $18.99 Paper

LESBIAN FICTION

Sarah Waters

This delightfully saucy debut novel recounts the unconventional life and times of Nan King, a Victorian-era lesbian bold enough to embrace and to eventually celebrate her unorthodox sexual orientation. This novel pays homage to women who courageously crossed the boundaries of conventional Victorian behavior and sexuality.

Virago Press Limited $19.95 Paper

Marci Blackman

Blackman's main character Po, revisits her past and relives some of her life's most vivid events. After a deep and moving exploration of her past and present, Po begins to understand the nature of personal empowerment and the healing process begins.

Manic D. Press $20.00 Paper

CANADIAN FICTION

Mouthing the Words presents a surprising voice full of wit, intelligence and courage. Gibb offers hoped-for insight into the world of a child, with a great deal that is funny, angry and important to say.

Pedlar Press $21.95 Paper

CHILDREN

bell hooks

Renowned feminist bell hooks takes on the subject of hair! Comb through the surface and find a celebration of childhood and girls and the freedom to express individuality. The book's much-needed message encourages girls to love and accept themselves (and others) just the way they are.

Hyperion Press $19.99 Hardcover

YOUNG WOMEN

Debbie Stoller et al.

The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order collects the best of BUST, including thoughtful articles, personal essays, and racy rants about anything from abortion to the lameness of the Lifetime television network. Having started out as a hand-stapled zine, BUST swims with an in-your-face, grrrl power attitude that alternately taunts, encourages, and calls readers to battle.

Penguin $22.99 Paper

Iyanla Vanzant

Don't Give It Away is a workbook that allows young women to write their feelings and express their thoughts about the things that matter to them - family, friends, image, intimacy etc. Problems at home and at school are a natural part of every young woman's life, but understanding what to do with how you feel about your problems is the key to growing up.

Simon & Schuster $16.25 Paper

RELATIONSHIPS

OUR GRANDMOTHERS, OURSELVES: Reflections of Canadian Women

Gina Valle

Our Grandmothers, Ourselves: Reflections of Canadian Women is a unique collection of creative non-fiction. Nineteen Canadian women of various cultural, ethnic and economic backgrounds celebrate the memories of their grandmothers and pay tribute to the significant roles they have played in forming their identities.

Raincoast Books $19.95 Paper

THEORY

Paula Gunn Allen

In this captivating collection of essays, Paula Gunn Allen explores the symbiotic relationship between Native American culture and the larger Western world. Through her own history and that of other Native peoples, she searches for a connection that will link the eco-spiritual and implicitly multicultural heritage to the demands of an increasingly global and culturally unilateral community.

Beacon Press $27.50 Paper

BETWEEN WOMAN AND NATION: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms & the State

Caren Kaplan et al.

Divided into three parts, this interdisciplinary collection first examines constructions of nationalism and communities, the affect of the regulation of nation-states on women's lives and the formation of transnational identity.

Duke University Press $29.50 Paper

Chris Weedon

Feminism, Theory and the Politics of Difference looks at the question of difference across the full spectrum of feminist theory from liberal, radical, lesbian and socialist to Black and postcolonial feminisms. It relates feminist approaches to difference and diversity, to the tendency within postmodernism to celebrate them, often without due attention to power.

Blackwell Publishers $38.95 Paper

Scratching the Surface brings together 14 anti-racist feminists who examine the ways in which race and gender interact to shape the lives of women of colour in Canada. This book now only provides exciting new insights into how women of colour experience Canadian society, but also provides instructors with a textbook that integrates anti-racist feminist approaches.

Women's Press $24.95 Paper

CALENDARS / DATE BOOKS

RAIN AND MUFFIN Calendar 2000

Lise Beaudry

Spend an entire year with Rain and Muffin as they take us on a 12-month adventure and offer us a humorous glimpse into their inflated world.

Lise Beaudry $20.00

Saskatoon Women's Calendar Collective

Celebrate the lives and accomplishments of Canadian women, bundled together with calendar pages that allow you to record and plan the details of your daily life.

Couteau Books $11.95 Paper

SPIRITUALITY

BOOK OF BLESSINGS: New Jewish Prayers for Daily Life, the Sabbath, and the New Moon Festival

Marcia Falk

A groundbreaking work in the literature of spirituality, this book offers a complete new liturgy in Hebrew as well as English. Steeped in dialogue with rabbinic tradition, it challenges the tradition's patriarchal assumptions, offering, in a poet's language, fresh images for our experience of divinity.

Beacon Press $40.00 Paper

Lucinda Vardey

Lucinda Vardey gathers an incandescent, unprecedented selection of nearly a thousand prayers and thoughts about them, set through the ages by women of many faiths. Their passionate words generate a dazzling arc of love between women and their most profound beliefs.

Alfred A. Knopf Canada $29.95 Hardcover

PHOTOGRAPHY

Julian Okwu

As I Am reflects the courage and strength of some inspiring and motivating women in their late teens to early 30s. It is an introspective examination of how young black women triumph in their day-to-day racist and sexist encounters

Chronicle Books $34.95 Hardcover

Linda Rogers

Sono Nis Press $24.95 Paper

MUSIC

Irene Farrera

Relax and unwind to the sounds of Latina musician Irene Farrera - from her debut CD - Soy De Ti.

Lektronic Soundscapes $20.00 Audio Compact Disc

LESBIAN NON-FICTION

Eli Clare

This book explores the landscape of disability, class, queerness and child abuse. It is a call to awareness, an exhortation for each of us to examine our connection to and alienation from our environment, our sexuality and each other.

South End Press $21.50 Paper

Catherine Lake

This compelling collection of writings reveals the distinctive impact of religion and spirituality on and in the lives of queer people. It is a provocative anthology that challenges those religious institutions that deem queer sexuality and gender identity as profane.

Queer Press $14.95 Paper

BODY IMAGE

Marcia Hutchinson

Marcia Hutchinson provides readers with 200 tools, exercises, mediations, explorations, reflections practices and revelations to help us get to know, celebrate, accept, respect, indulge and tap the wisdom of the only body we have.

Crossing Press Inc. $19.95 Paper

CANADIAN WOMEN

Maude Barlow

This book reveals Maude Barlow's heartfelt convictions and thoughts about people she has encountered over the years, the partisan and frequently nasty nature of politics in Canada, and her high profile battles for safeguarding the country she loves so passionately.

Harper Collins $18.95 Paper