Selections from the “Until the Violence Stops” Festival Featuring writings by Abiola Abrams • Edward Albee • Tariq Ali • Maya Angelou • Periel Aschenbrand • Patricia Bosworth • Nicole Burdette • Kate Clinton • Kimberle Crenshaw • Michael Cunningham • Edwidge Danticat • Ariel Dorfman • Mollie Doyle • Slavenka Drakulic • Michael Eric Dyson • Dave Eggers • Kathy Engel • Eve Ensler • Jane Fonda • Carol Gilligan • Jyllian Gunther • Suheir Hammad • Christine House • Marie Howe • Carol Michèle Kaplan • Moisés Kaufman • Michael Klein • Nicholas Kristof • James Lecesne • Elizabeth Lesser • Mark Matousek • Deena Metzger • Susan Miller • Winter Miller • Susan Minot • Robin Morgan • Kathy Najimy • Lynn Nottage • Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy • Sharon Olds • Hanan al-Shaykh • Anna Deavere Smith • Diana Son • Monica Szlekovics • Robert Thurman • Betty Gale Tyson • Alice Walker • Jody Williams • Erin Cressida Wilson • Howard Zinn This groundbreaking collection, edited by author and playwright Eve Ensler, features pieces from “Until the Violence Stops,” the international tour that brings the issue of violence against women and girls to the forefront of our consciousness. These diverse voices rise up in a collective roar to break open, expose, and examine the insidiousness of brutality, neglect, a punch, or a put-down. Here is Edward Albee on S&M; Maya Angelou on women’s work; Michael Cunningham on self-mutilation; Dave Eggers on a Sudanese abduction; Carol Gilligan on a daughter witnessing her mother being hit; Susan Miller on raising a son as a single mother; and Sharon Olds on a bra. These writings are inspired, funny, angry, heartfelt, tragic, and beautiful. But above all, together they create a true and profound portrait of this issue’s effect on every one of us. With information on how to organize an “Until the Violence Stops” event in your community, A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer is a call to the world to demand an end to violence against women. “In the current era, it takes some brain racking to think of anyone else doing anything quite like Ensler. She’s a countercultural consciousness-raiser, an empowering figure, a truth-teller.” –Chicago Tribune Eve Ensler is an internationally bestselling author and an acclaimed playwright whose works for the stage include  The Vagina Monologues, Necessary Targets , and  The Good Body . She is the author of  Insecure at Last , a political memoir. Ensler is the founder of V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls. In the last decade, V-Day has raised more than $70 million for grassroots groups that work to end violence against women and girls around the world. Eve Ensler lives in Paris and New York City. Looking for the Body Music Michael Klein My friend Frank calls it looking for the body music—the music my mother heard. At the end of looking for the body music, one stumbles upon a woman’s body with the whole world taken out of her—but before that scene, a foreshadow: my mother at the boarding school. She’s twelve, child of two alcoholics, vaudevillians, shadows on a stage. She’s overweight and sees beyond herself even then, so the girls are mean in their pressed dresses and routinely hang my mother out the window by her feet for a long time waiting for the exactly right cadence of please before they pull her back into her life. That was in 1940-something—the year my mother began the book her mind was writing called this is what happened to me— the book she read to us—pill-language to cushion the abyss of two marriages— one husband beat her up, one husband took her money and broke her off with the world until she got written as the failed suicide after hanging by a thread by a hair, by her feet, borne of her fierce suspension over something called a youth. 7 Variations on Margarita Weinberg Moisés Kaufman Dedicated to the memory of Rebeca Clisci Akerman 1. My grandmother was born in the Ukraine but immigrated to Venezuela before the Second World War. She told me this story: A young Jewish woman was kidnapped by a group of Cossacks during a pogrom. They brought her into a room and held her down, deciding who would have her first. “If you touch me I will put a curse on you,” the woman said. “I am a witch.” The Cossacks laughed. “I can prove it!” she shouted. “I can prove to you that I’m a witch.” Their leader smiled and said, “Very well. Prove it, then.” “I am immortal,” she said, “and you cannot kill me.” They laughed some more. “You cannot kill me. Not even if you shoot me. Try it.” They stopped laughing and looked at her. “Here. Try it.” She pointed to her chest. “Shoot me right here. You will see that I’m immortal.” The Cossacks looked at one another but didn’t move. “Shoot me in the heart. You will see I won’t die. And then you’ll have your proof that I’m a witch.” The leader thought for a moment, then quickly took out his pistol and shot her in the heart. The young woman fell to the floor bleeding, looked at