Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life

by Darcey Steinke

Menopause hit Darcey Steinke hard. First came hot flashes. Then insomnia. Then depression. As she struggled to express what was happening to her, she came up against a culture of silence. Throughout history, the natural physical transition of menopause has been viewed as something to deny, fear, and eradicate. Menstruation signals fertility and life, and childbirth is revered as the ultimate expression of womanhood. Menopause is seen as a harbinger of death. Some books Steinke found promoted hormone replacement therapy. Others encouraged acceptance. But Steinke longed to understand menopause in a more complex, spiritual, and intellectually engaged way.

In Flash Count Diary, Steinke writes frankly about aspects of Menopause that have rarely been written about before. She explores the changing gender landscape that comes with reduced hormone levels, and lays bare the transformation of female desire and the realities of prejudice against older women. Weaving together her personal story with philosophy, science, art, and literature, Steinke reveals that in the seventeenth century, women who had hot flashes in front of others could be accused of being witches; that the model for Duchamp's famous �tant donn�s was a post-reproductive woman; and that killer whales--one of the only other species on earth to undergo menopause--live long post-reproductive lives.

Flash Count Diary, with its deep research, open play of ideas, and reverence for the female body, will change the way you think about menopause. It's a deeply feminist book--honest about the intimations of mortality that menopause brings while also arguing for the ascendancy, beauty, and power of the post-reproductive years.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Health, Feminism, Womens, Science, Essays

240 pages, Hardcover

First published June 18, 2019

About the author

Darcey Steinke is an American author and educator known for her evocative novels and thoughtful nonfiction. She has written five novels, including Up Through the Water, Suicide Blonde, Jesus Saves, Milk, and Sister Golden Hair. She is also the author of the spiritual memoir Easter Everywhere and Flash Count Diary, a meditation on menopause and natural life. Her fiction often explores the intersection of the spiritual and the physical, with two of her novels, Up Through the Water and Jesus Saves, selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Steinke has contributed essays and articles to publications such as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Vogue, and The Guardian, and co-edited the essay collection Joyful Noise with Rick Moody. In addition to her writing career, she has taught creative writing at institutions like Princeton University, Columbia University, Barnard College, and the American University of Paris. Originally from Oneida, New York, and the daughter of a Lutheran minister, Steinke now lives in Brooklyn with her husband, journalist Michael Hudson, and their daughter. A former guitarist for the band Ruffian, she continues to explore the connections between art, spirit, and human experience through her work.

Reviews

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot to like about Darcey Steinke's book Flash Count Diary, most especially it's piercing critique of the medicalization of menopause, the transformation of a normal life event into a disease to be cured. Her skewering of men - particular those who are doctors - who believe menopause is all about dried-up vaginas is particularly on point. Her quest to connect with other animals who experience menopause is also quite moving.

But a couple of things didn't sit right with me. First, Steinke talks about becoming more androgynous with menopause, and feeling increasingly outside the binary of male and female. She does not, in saying this, claim a non-binary or trans identity, but she does use the stories of non-binary and trans individuals to bolster her point that a change in hormones means a change in self. I was deeply uncomfortable with Steinke using the stories of trans and non-binary individuals' hormonal transitions to prop up her feelings about menopause. While Steinke would argue there is a great deal of common ground between menopausal women who are trying to grow used to a new self and trans and non-binary folk deciding on hormonal transition to bring their bodies into accord with their self, I don't think it holds up. And there are power differences between the two situations that are never addressed. For many trans and non-binary people transition is about survival, and 'surviving' cisness is not the same thing.

This is also a book that barely considers race. Steinke presents ciswomen's experiences as universal, but there are real, meaningful differences in the ways that women of different racial groups experience sexuality and gender, even if they're straight and cis. There's no consideration here of the way that Black women's sexuality has been commodified, strangled, and exaggerated by white culture as a means of devaluing Black women's bodies, autonomy, and community. There's no consideration of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, and the way that white men have been socialized to believe Native women's bodies are theirs for the violent taking. There's also no space to consider that menopause is looked at differently within human groups - that her experience as a white woman is not necessarily the same as that of a ciswoman in other cultures in America, where aging is not so reviled.

I'm glad I read this book, because we all need to talk more openly about menopause. I learned things I'm glad to know. But I can't exactly recommend the book given the major flaws.

[Wendi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've found it difficult to find books or online articles about menopause that aren't heavily weighted for either favour or disdain of hormone replacement. I have my personal tendency about how I would prefer to travel this path, but I've been wanting to read personal experiences about menopause, not enter into the heavily preached (on both sides) fray.

When Farrar, Straus, and Giroux offered the ARC for review, I was impressed by the synopsis because it seemed to be very much what I've been looking for. And on the whole, it is. The caveat here is that because it truly is nearly impossible to discuss this event in women's lives without including some of what is the most currently discussed medical practices surrounding it, Steinke doesn't fail to include her opinion. Not that she shouldn't have; not that I expected her not to do this. Just a heads up to other women who may be looking for the same sort of reading I have been seeking. She includes the fascinating history of how hormone replacement became a standard practice in the United States and statistics/studies of associated risks.

However, this isn't solely about all of that. Instead, this memoir is a wildly hybrid accounting of history, science, spirituality, nature, medicine, folklore, advertising, and, above all, deeply personal memoir.

There's a lot of conflict here; an example is that Steinke relates how her own sexual drive and that of her friends and other women, changed while going through menopause and how the greater (male dominated) society wants them to remain willing and pliable and sexual when they have physical and physiological changes that may make them reluctant. Then she turns around and explains how orcas, the only known mammal on earth that also goes through menopause, remain sexually adventurous within their pods and that "in their culture.... they don't have that human taboo: don't sleep with old women." This feels like a contradictory lament. That's just brilliant to me as a reader, though - if you know someone going through menopause, or have gone through or are going through it yourself, you know damn well that almost everything about the process can be a contradiction - sex drive, physical changes, emotional changes, life circumstances, social interactions, and psychological interactions - moments of simultaneous despair and joy.

There is a general bent here towards the nature/natural/spiritual side of this process and you'll definitely feel akin to her experience if you're already geared that way. You don't need to be, though, as it's quite relatable (with some amazing writing) regardless. The only generally targeted audience I wouldn't recommend it to would be those absolutely, 100% committed to hormone replacement and won't brook an argument otherwise.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher making this one available for me to review. It comes out in the States on June 18th. I just sped through it, horrified and enlightened, fascinated and heartened. It's a fantastic and honest memoir in a category sorely lacking.

[Jenna Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three paragraphs in, I was crying with the profound relief that comes with having one's experience finally, finally recognized -- not just in a commiserative way about the physical aspect (though, that too) but in the larger philosophical and spiritual questions that come up about mortality, gender, and nature.
We should all be talking about this aspect of human life, and Steinke fucking nails it, is what I'm saying.

[RH Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't read books about childrearing and menopause because they are inherently interesting, but because I am desperate for help, and this book met my bleakness. If anything, it just shows that you have to write your own way out. I am sick and tired of our society's misogyny and abuse of nature, and pretending like I don't care is an adolescent defense mechanism. I'm rewriting this review because I lashed out at Steinke for just not saying it's okay to go through menopause -- she hates it as much as I do. As someone living in a remote rural town I envied her house in Brooklyn, teaching gigs in Paris and world travel -- I wrote "guess what, bitches, I'm in a bad mood" out of helpless spite. Who gets to complain is an old vicious issue from my family -- the answer is dad. I have plenty of privilege in my life to buy books, read them and write about them. I want to read more of these books about the lives of women, and understand that our passages are part inheritance, part creation.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this in a Goodreads giveaway.
Really good book. Sad that there is so little research on menopause. This illustrates how half the human race has to just improvise dealing with it. The idea that it is a "problem" that needs solving is so frustrating.

[Denise Link · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating this is hard, because this book wasn't exactly what I wanted it to be, but it is important and essential for starting the discussion.
Menopause is hard, not because we all have the kind of overwhelming hot flashes the author does (I didn't), but because all of us must go through it with little or no framework in which to experience it. What information we have before the fact, gleaned mostly through mean-spirited jokes and oblique references, is hugely negative. This book starts to remedy that, but we need more, from different voices, in different genres, about different experiences.

[Debbie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank goodness this was a borrow from the library. To me it felt like this started out as a magazine article that was rather unsuccessfully stretched into a short book. I'm currently going through menopause without hormone therapy and I simply could not relate to or appreciate her angry, negative perspective on this phase of life. I found nothing helpful or enlightening here.

[Mehrsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting perspective on menopause and our cultural relationship with aging women. The premise was to link human menopause to animals and the natural world, but I didn't find that part satisfying. I did enjoy her musings and research on femininity and old age.

[Jenni Link · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, having picked it up after reading a few thought-provoking excerpts and interviews. It has its insightful moments, but overall it’s just not very good. The author’s entitlement is a constant distraction, as are the cultural criticism contortions she puts various texts and situations through to underline her/our oppression. She obviously read widely on the topic before writing, but doesn’t engage much with the books she name-drops, instead sprinkling each chapter with aphorisms like a college student trying to meet a minimum word count. Anyone who picks this somewhat obscure book up surely reads a lot, and surely has some awareness of how older women are viewed and treated in literature and in life, so I expected more than a de Beauvoir quote here and a Judy Chicago reference there. The section about killer whales - the only other mammals whose females have long post-reproductive lives - was the highlight, a new way of thinking about our aging as animals. I also enjoyed the chapter about her mother, which let the particular reveal the universal. The various chapters never gelled as a whole, though. I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be, and I don’t think the author could, either,

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's about damn time.

[Bookread2day · Rating 5 out of 5]

Flash Count Diary is a new story about the menopause. Every woman should read this Flash Count Diary. Most books are about how to get rid of hot flushes, but there's nothing on the scientific and self help of menopause. This book goes into what happened to Darcey Steinke during the nights when hot flashes occurred. And what other remedies are out there on the market. The saddest thing is the terrible jokes that are said about menopause. One of the most interesting parts was when Darcey went to a conference centre in Amsterdam to learn about how women in other countries were treated during the change.

[Crystal · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another cis woman who equates menopause with becoming less woman. Except this one equates her experience of feeling more androgynous because of looking less feminine with the experiences of trans people on HRT. I was already skeptical because she'd cited Germaine Greer multiple times and though it seemed she was in favor of trans rights and multiple genders appropriating the experiences of trans people is super gross. Her kid kept telling her she didn't get it.

There aren't many books that take on menopause but no thanks.

[Kristin Boldon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book about menopause, like its subject, is complicated and hard to handle. I found there was a lot of good (the wide-ranging examination into the science of menopause, the analogies in the animal world, and its sociological reception), some bad (the author's comparison of herself to a prisoner and to trans people undergoing hormone treatment, and her lack of situating her privilege, were not as nuanced as I'd like), and some ugly (the author's symptoms, those reported from her interviews, and details of the pervasive patriarchal problem that aging, non-fertile women pose by their very existence--all these made for rich, if painful reading.) This deceptively short book with its pithy segments separated by white space packs a punch. There is a buttload of research interwoven with a memoir narrative. This is a deeply researched book, meticulously crafted. Complaints that it's poorly written are, simply, wrong.

I've been intrigued to scan the negative reviews of this book, many of which seem to embody some of what Steinke is critiquing in the book. She's not nice. She's not upbeat, though I do find the ending hopeful, in a realistic way. She is not going quiet into the good night. And that's why I liked this book so much. Steinke is having a rough time of menopause, and is here to tell us about it. She is giving us a diary that doesn't try to wrap itself in 20 layers of toilet paper and hide itself at the bottom of a trash can. It tells some brutal truths. She dares to show herself as one of the most reviled characters in literature, the unlikeable female narrator. She admits to unkind thoughts about her mother, her husband, and that poor girl on the whale watching trip who didn't see an orca. She did not have to do this. She could have censored out the ugly bits. But the ugliness--like how menopause has been feared, reviled, and defiled over history--is much of her point. I am grateful for her complicated honesty, which made the hopeful ending feel all the more earned.

So, should you read this book? It depends. This is not a feel-good book, though it can be a book to elicit empathy from those who feel bad. It is not a how-to book. It is one woman's curious mind turning over every stone she can find in search of answers. In that way, it belongs on the same shelf with books by two of the authors who blurb it on the back: Jenny Offill's Dept of Speculation, and Maggie Nelson's Bluets and Argonauts. If you didn't like those books, I suspect you won't like this one. If you did like those books, then give this one a try, with the understanding that it is a memoir, not a manual, it is not a ray of effin' sunshine, and its topics range widely.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning.

Stienke is marvelous and brave and honest and wrote the exact book I needed right now - not because it is comforting, in fact partly because it is the opposite - rage-making (yet still hopeful). Her meditations on similarities of humans and whales, esp older, postmenopausal females - amazing. I needed to hear her honest assessments of relating with her mom and husbands; her refusal to accept the surface truths of ideas and of people's existence; her reasoning for why she refuses to pharmaceutically extend her cycles ad infinitum. And I loved - and needed to hear - what the many women who corresponded with her said about their experiences. Will be re-reading this one, and that's the highest compliment I can give.

Made me feel so much less alone as a woman, as a human, as an animal, struggling.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I burned (ha!) through this book in one sitting. It was a great read. Empowering, revelatory, heartbreaking, empathetic, poetic, wise, profane and deeply spiritual. For me it was a much needed branch to grab onto amid the eddying rapids (both emotional and physical) of my 49th year. Yaaaassss!

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are in menopause or peri-menopause or really if you’re a woman at any stage of life, read this book. This is a collection of thoughtful and thought provoking chapters that have me thinking about my body, my femininity, and my humanity in new ways.

[Kama · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life changing. I was alternately nodding vigorously and being on the verge of tears with every paragraph.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a lot going on in this book. I have to say, I liked it best when it was a combination of memoir, research, and activism.
I was less interested, strangely, in her account of menopause, though it is what propels her into the other meditations. I didn't relate to her experience of menopause, though I could appreciate her take on it. But, as I said, I did like her research on other mammals, especially whales. I also liked when she contemplated her relationship with her mother and her daughter.
Overall, this is well-written, and I think it is intentionally scattered, but the threads do come together in interesting ways.
As I said, I liked the whale/mother sections the most, but it's an interesting read and a much-needed contribution to writings by women on menopause.

[Leyla · Rating 1 out of 5]

The worst take on menopause I have EVER READ. This book is trash and I am mad I spent money on it. The author looks down on women who would consider HT to “hold on” to the fertile period of their life and just become “compliant and fuckable”. How about if a woman just wants to not feel insane? For herself? Garbage.

[Bridgett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a refreshing and different look at menopause in that it never once suggests that menopause is a disease that needs to be treated with HT.

[Carolee Wheeler · Rating 4 out of 5]

a beguiling mixture of horror and empowerment, minute and broad. Essential reading.

[Ke* · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not for me. I found nothing enlightening in it.

[Barbara (The Bibliophage) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally posted on my book blog, TheBibliophage.com.

In Flash Count Diary, Darcey Steinke presents her perspective on various aspects of menopause. It’s one woman’s experience, and thus, a memoir. And yet, it’s so much more. There’s science, social commentary, and some thoughts on medical methods. But if you’re looking for a “how-to make menopause easy book,” this isn’t directly it. Still, I came away feeling empowered.

As the subtitle says, the book is really about “Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life.” Vindication, meaning justification against censure. Steinke refuses to accept the prevalent, negative patriarchal perspective of menopause. I couldn’t agree more. Menopause is a natural part of life, despite the denigrating attitudes of men in adjacent fields. And, let’s face it, in our bedrooms.

Steinke bares her soul, honestly recounting thoughts, emotions, and Google searches from her sleepless nights. She searches for details on how other mammal species manage post-menopausal life. Her extensive exploration of the matriarchal aspects of killer whales is fascinating and poignant.

My favorite chapters
In contrast, she rails against the “anti-aging” treatments presented by the male medical establishment. Fundamentally, she realizes, these treatments are for the comfort and benefit of men. They are not designed to make life better for the women whose bodies they seek to “improve.” So be prepared for discussions of hormones, vaginal atrophy, and post-menopausal sex. Steinke allows her raw feelings about her own body to show. By extension, she gives readers the chance to examine their own changing body image.

I especially liked the frank discussion of changes in how Steinke, and post-menopausal women in general, express their femininity. She compares this time period to that liminal space before and just after puberty, when a young woman must find her new self. So, a post-menopausal woman has a similar opportunity. In one time period, a girl becomes fully a part of her gender. And in the second, women experience an un-gendering. In her effort to understand, Steinke compares and contrasts this experience with the transgender process of transitioning from female to male.

Flash Count Diary is less about the author’s own hot flashes, and more about society’s attitude towards menopause. She examines the aging woman in art, literature, and culture through the ages.

Conclusions
When I search online for books about menopause, I find advice and medical information from folks like Ann Louise Gittleman and Christiane Northrop, MD. And these books have a place, both in general and on my own bookshelf. But there are few memoirs about individual experiences with menopause. By few, I mean I found two. Even though 50-51% of the world’s population is female.

With that in mind, Flash Count Diary inhabits a unique space on the bookshelf. But Darcey Steinke isn’t writing about an uncommon experience. She’s writing about one that every single woman goes through, should she be blessed to live four or five decades. If you are a woman so blessed, I encourage you to give this book a shot. You may not be entranced with killer whales, but you will have experienced plenty that the author writes about.

I loved this book. There are moments where Steinke reaches into my heart of hearts and says, “I’m with you.” Others, not so much. As a woman who’s had a relatively easy time of “the change,” I could nonetheless relate to most or all of the author’s more challenging experiences.

Amazingly, as I read this book, a Kindle book (The New Moon's Arms) struck my fancy. I plan to read it soon, since it concerns a woman who finds that her childhood magical skills return after she reaches menopause. Sounds like a perfect pair to this book!

Acknowledgements
I received this book in a giveaway on Goodreads, with no requirement of a review. All opinions here are my honest impressions of the book. Thanks to the author and publisher for the opportunity!

[Jim Higgins · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. In a book that's both intensely personal and widerangingly literary, scientific and political, Stienke wrestles with the changes menopause has wrought in her as well as cultural denigration of postmenopausal women. She spends considerable narrative energy on killer whales, one of the few other species that goes through menopause, and a species she clearly feels a strong kinship with.

[Lulu · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book afforded me the opportunity to explain menopause to a 10YO boy I was babysitting for. As we joked about reverse puberty, he wondered whether you stop stinking as well as menstruating. I’ll let you know in 5 or 10 years.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh goodness, there was so much I desperately wanted to like about this book and, in fact, many sections that I found deeply moving and/or clarifying to my own internal feelings. However, there is a very specific point, early in the book in her first invocation of whale imagery, where I turned from "I'm on board" to "oof," and that was in Steinke's use of the excellent movie "Whale Rider."

She writes, "I felt like the Maori girl in the film 'Whale Rider.' The film alternates between footage of whales swimming underwater and the girl, Paikea, struggling on land with Koro, her grandfather. Koro does not believe girls can lead. [...] Paikea must ultimately ride a whale in order to convince her family, her community, and herself that she possesses both essential wildness and strength."

If this feels a little cringe-y, Steinke recognizes it, but ultimately writes "It was all so embarrassing. I am not Native American."

Except Paikea isn't Native American. She's Maori, a group indigenous to New Zealand.

It's a small error (though one that should have been caught by the editor, c'mon), but one that I returned to later in the book, during a second whale encounter, where Steinke turns a critical eye to a young woman on her kayaking trip, one whom she identifies as a teenager named Vickie, a cheerleader who "takes frequent selfies of herself smiling." Steinke's regularly returns to observing Vickie, often through a critical eye, and evaluating the young woman's relationship to the whales. Is this young woman experiencing the whales correctly? Authentically? There is a moment of empathy, when no whales are seen on the trip and Vickie cries. But even then, Steinke acknowledges that she'd "like to distance [herself] from Vickie."

In both instances, Steinke doesn't see the young women. She incorrectly uses a catch-all PC term for indigenous people for Paikea, thereby misattributing and erasing the core of Whale Rider's story. Then, in what could be an obvious parallel -- a young woman, seeing a certain power in whales -- Steinke later asks the reader to make fun of Vickie with her for not appreciating whales "correctly."

In talking about menopause as a way of feeling greater empathy and connection, of creating new neural pathways and seeing things with clarity, I didn't understand how Steinke couldn't then see these instances of deep cloudiness.

[Mikala · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too many descriptions of animal cruelty for what I was expecting going into this.

It's a goal of mine to pick up more non-fiction this year. Specifically, more feminist lit. I seen "Flash Count Diary" immediately available at my library and thought Wow...how is it that a topic that effects half the worlds population I know nothing about.

With that being said I can't say that I know that much more now after finishing this.

I was really interested to learn more about menopause, the effects, and the authors experience. While I got some of that, Overall, I found this book to be really discombobulated. There was a lot of well-researched topics discussed but I also found some of that to be not relevant to the topic or what I was looking to learn from this.

There were also two triggering chapters that I had to skim read to get through (chapter 3 - all about examples of animal cruelty and chapter 7-super sexual, weird content that made me feel extremely uncomfortable).

I did really like chapter 8 which was about the author's mother's experience with aging and how she was not respected by her husband or as a stay at home mom in her day.

I also thought it was super interesting her describing feeling androgynous after menopause and enjoying that feeling.

Also, I was so intrigued by the author's examples of how information given about older women or specifically on menopause is almost slanderous. Especially the examples she gave of how women in the early 1900's were treated or the insane advice given to them to deal with menopause. I can't say I was shocked.

Overall, I thought this was okay but I wouldn't highly recommend it. I'll be on the hunt for more important nonfiction on menopause and this highly overlooked and disregarded topic.

Quotes I loved:

*The author felt like her "nightgown was affixed with hot glue" -which is such strong imagery
*When speaking on the way society treats menopause she says that is is often "filtered through male bafflement and repugnance" -and gives example of common sitcom tropes or "jokes" used.
*"outside sex men are never interested in hearing how our bodies feel"

[Miri · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written book on an underexplored subject. I didn’t really connect with all the stuff about whales and spirituality, though, and would’ve rather read more narratives about what it’s like to live with menopause.

The author also does a very understandable thing and conflates menopause with aging, which isn’t the case for those of us experiencing early/chemically induced menopause due to illness. A lot of the stuff about the freedom of not having to deal with sexual desire and attractiveness anymore doesn’t exactly resonate with me at 28. But, yeah, perhaps I should write my own book then.

[Ellyn Lem · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really fascinating book about menopause, but it is not a self-help book or scientific approach; instead, Steinke focuses a lot on the natural world (whales in particular) to figure out what getting older means in our society--particularly, what are biological changes but what are social and cultural messages. Interspersed with her fascinating stories of whales and chimps is her story, dealing with the hot "flash"es from the title, but only to better understand herself. She combines quotes from fiction writers, anthropologists, theorists, all of which have something to contribute, even if it times it became a bit too-quotey for me! Still, I could not wait to hear what she would share next either about her experiences (heading to a menopause conference hearing men talk almost exclusively about older women's late in life problems regarding sexuality or looking for whales). Frank discussions of vaginas happen in this book (so those who are prudish-beware!), but it is a lovely treatment of a complicated subject that so many people get wrong. By the end, there is much to be gathered about why females late in life should be seen as leaders and not has-been outdated versions of their earlier selves. Bravo!

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

All his descriptions explain how the vagina might feel to an incoming penis. The vagina as a viable penis holder. Not how a vagina might feel to the woman it belongs to.

“The proper woman,” writes Braun, “is constructed as childlike and virginal with an unused vagina.”

“Law,” Hyde writes, “constructs the vagina largely as a hiding place, full of secrets the eye cannot behold from outside, where drugs and other mysterious narratives lurk.”

When I started this book, I assumed we'd soon have our first female post-reproductive, pod-leader president. A killer whale matriarch in the White House. This did not come to pass.