Women Culture

How did a former welfare mother, a "middle-class mystic with delicate intestines," end up on the national bestseller lists, just six weeks after her book was published? Clarissa Pinkola Estes, the Jungian analyst who wrote "Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype," thinks the answer is obvious. "It's not a how-to book." But "Wolves" was written with healing in mind.

Ana Soto put off going to the doctor for several years, fearing she wouldn't be able to pay for the office visit. Then a relative told her she could get a checkup for next to nothing at Valley Community Clinic in North Hollywood. The word-of-mouth referral saved Soto's life. A routine mammogram revealed a lump in her breast, the 49-year-old North Hollywood housewife said, speaking in Spanish through an interpreter.

TO USE THE PARLANCE OF THE time, mythology is making a comeback. I'm not referring to such modern myths as: There's a giant alligator living in the sewers of Manhattan, Jimi Hendrix is alive and living on the same island as Jimmy Hoffa and Jim Croce, or Ted Koppel has no legs. I am referring to the ancient myths of Egypt, Greece and Rome--lore passed through the centuries by oracles, witches and pagans.

He was a typical Taiwanese husband, his embittered wife said. He spent her money, dined out every night and left her alone with the kids. "He treated his buddies like his own blood and muscle and his wife as if she was just a piece of clothing," said Ho Tse-suan. Ho, a 43-year-old accountant, chose what was once a rare solution to this common complaint. Despite courts that still favor men when it comes to property and child custody, she chose divorce.

After six hours of panhandling and fending off abusive propositions, a weary homeless woman named Lisa returned to the Skid Row hotel room that she and a male companion had scrounged up enough money to rent for a few days. There, Lisa's companion attacked her because she had not brought back enough money and cigarettes. "You see all these little black and blues?" she told a USC graduate student later, pointing to her bruises. "Because he wants a . . . dollar and a quarter."

To Mexicans, San Miguel de Allende is the birthplace of independence; although Father Miguel Hidalgo issued the grito , or shout for independence, in 1810 from neighboring Dolores Hidalgo, the annual re-enactment takes place in San Miguel's main plaza. A new grito is heard in San Miguel these days, not shouted, but murmured. Quietly, in meetings at the Unity Church, in the waters of Escondido hot springs, over cups of espresso at El Buen Cafe, wherever the expatriates hang out.

It's nearly 2 a.m. and tensely quiet at the corner of Sunset and Echo Park. The streets are almost empty, and when a battered blue Dodge comes creaking down the hill, a cop flags it over for no apparent reason. A couple of homeboys who have just gotten out of prison swap stories with some other neighborhood guys in the parking lot behind the Los Burritos stand and the Centro Medico.

One morning last July in the nation's capital, artist Judy Chicago stood in her work-out leotards outside a YMCA and scanned the headlines of a sidewalk newsstand. "There, on the front page of the Washington Times, was a color picture of me and 'The Dinner Party,' " said Chicago, referring to her controversial mixed-media tribute to prominent women of history. "I looked at it and went, 'Huh?' I didn't have a quarter with me so I couldn't even buy a copy."

You don't have to know chapter and verse of author Susan Faludi's popular book "Backlash" to see that women's rights are still under siege. But feminism in the arts--where race has become the granting category of choice--isn't as easy a sell these days. "It's so hard in the arts to have women's voices heard that we need to segregate ourselves for empowerment," Katie Goodman says. "There needs to be a safe forum. There already is the men's theater festival. That's what the whole world is."

Let me, as a rapidly middle-aging man, try to understand what it's like to be a woman. Not all aspects of womanhood, mind you, but that part of their existence that involves vulnerability and exploitation. Already the chorus of women's voices goes up: Try all you want, buster, you'll never understand . And they're right. It's that gap between intellectualizing something and experiencing it that will forever separate the sexes.

When Rana, a former junior in English at Kabul University, first reluctantly donned a burka--the emblem of a woman's place in the new Afghan order--her heart sank. "I felt really bad," said the 23-year-old Kabul resident. "Since the day the Taliban came, I have felt that I am a woman, and that I have no choice in my life."

One can identify with and appreciate the essence of an artwork in and of itself without any knowledge of an art ist's life. But often one can also learn a lot about an artist from an artwork, because art is really inseparable from the person who created it. For its annual members' show this year, the Southern California Women's Caucus for Art set out to organize an exhibit of work that would represent a variety of women's voices, cultural identities and experiences.

To Mexicans, San Miguel de Allende is the birthplace of independence; although Father Miguel Hidalgo issued the grito , or shout for independence, in 1810 from neighboring Dolores Hidalgo, the annual re-enactment takes place in San Miguel's main plaza. A new grito is heard in San Miguel these days, not shouted, but murmured. Quietly, in meetings at the Unity Church, in the waters of Escondido hot springs, over cups of espresso at El Buen Cafe, wherever the expatriates hang out.

A shelter for battered women from the San Fernando Valley's Asian and Middle Eastern communities will be opening this fall. The Coalition of Women from Asia and the Middle East, which meets monthly in Van Nuys, plans to open the shelter in a four-bedroom house in Silver Lake donated to the group by Tasneem Khan, an insurance broker from Kashmir.

You and I, we have the itch. --Henry Miller in a letter to Erica Jong, July 7, 1974 The subject on the table is that much-vaunted bugaboo, the sexual revolution. But everything else appears to be, shall we say, discreet. The table sits genteelly in the plein-air restaurant of the Bel-Air Hotel. And the woman who has thrown out the subject is conservatively garbed in a bottle-green Claude Montana suit. Indeed, the topic shocks her.

Laura seemed to have it all. She was smart and beautiful. She had an intelligent, loving husband, two beautiful children and an interesting career. But that was not enough. She wanted excitement and passion. So for 11 years she carried on an extramarital affair with a longtime friend, a married lawyer. It was during their forbidden, secret moments together that Laura (not her real name) got "the rush" she was seeking. And it wasn't just sex.

Women are waiting longer than ever to marry and, although 90% of current young adult American women are expected to marry at some time in their lives, the number is lower than the historical rate of 95%, according to a Bureau of Census report released today. The report, based on a 1990 survey of women, reveals evidence of other new trends in marriage but stops short of identifying the causes.

Q ueen Latifah has been proclaimed the monarch of female rap ever since the 1989 release of her first album, " All Hail the Queen, " which some consider a feminist manifesto. Selling nearly 500,000 copies primarily to rap's hard-core audience, it has been one of the most influential rap collections of recent years and inspired many women to try rap.

Women are waiting longer than ever to marry and, although 90% of current young adult American women are expected to marry at some time in their lives, the number is lower than the historical rate of 95%, according to a Bureau of Census report released today. The report, based on a 1990 survey of women, reveals evidence of other new trends in marriage but stops short of identifying the causes.

In the week since the Republicans left Houston, it has been hard to decide whether they are waging a presidential campaign or a war against working women. Something of the sort was implicit in the statements last week by the variety of bargain-basement brown shirts whose contempt for emancipated women rivals their hatred of immigrants and gay and lesbian people.