Here, as in any book review periodical, it is important to be aware the fact that the selection of books to review and of reviewers reflect the biases of the editor(s). It seems to me that the most obvious characteristic of the WRB is an orientation toward the academic world. The majority of books reviewed have been written by professors and are reviewed by professors (women professors, mind you). Feminist scholars have needed this kind of attention because their work is often ignored or badly treated in the 'male-stream' academic journals.

My only concern is that, if the WRB truly wishes to reach out into the whole feminist community, it will need to broaden its choices to include reviews of some mass market books (even though they may be reviewed in the conventional press) and of more books from small women's presses. I was pleased to read Florence Rush's (author of The Best Kept Secret: Sexual Abuse of Children) review of Jeffrey Masson's "The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory, book which has caused considerable furor recently. In the conventional press a quick survey of the books reviewed in the most recent issues of WRB only four or five of them came from feminist presses. Those that did were mostly related to minority women. It's impossible to come to any conclusions from such a small sample, but more focus on feminist presses would be welcome. Reviews of any current novels or poetry are also scarce in WRB - even a column by a knowledgeable writer would help to identify interesting new releases. What seem to be best served are the academic discipline - literature, history, sociology, and psychology in particular - where feminists have made the most progress. My hope is that as the WRB expands it will be able to review a broader range of works, in fulfillment of the goals I quoted earlier.

One of the other traits of the WRB which has limited its scope is that the reviews are considerably longer than the ones I usually see. Some of them are more review essays which bring the book(s) into focus by discussing other related books and the background of the subject matter. These reviews place the books in context, rather than presenting individual books as isolated acts of creation. They often show how feminist work differs from traditional work in a field, or how feminist insights from one discipline contribute in an inter-disciplinary way. I find this kind of discussion very interesting. But, of course, it means that the WRB reviews fewer books in its twenty pages than it might. Again, I can only applaud what the WRB is doing and hope that it will grow.

My other main comment on the choices that the WRB has made is that it is decidedly American, with a heavy learning to the northeastern U.S. A certain amount of this is natural, given the location of the WRB in the midst of the active women's community around Boston and New York. However,

I found it frustrating to read a review of Alice Munro's Moons of Jupiter which scarcely mentioned that Munro is a Canadian. The review was comparing Munro's book to short story collections by Ann Beattie and Bobbie Ann Mason and made reference to the growth of the "American" short story. I do not consider myself to be a rabid Canadian nationalist, but this review set my teeth on edge. There was also a review of Margaret Atwood's Murder in the Dark in the same issue which made Atwood's nationality clear from the beginning, but I suspect that she is a special case.

There have been, in fact, very few review or reviewers from outside of the U.S. As time goes on, I hope that the WRB will choose to look beyond their current horizons to include the work of women from the rest of the world. This would give the WRB a wider perspective and would provide non-American feminist writers with a means of reaching a wider audience. Using Canada as an example, books by Marie-Claire Blais, Phyllis Webb, or Dorothy Live say deserve to reach more women. One simple way to start would be to commission review essays on the state of women's literature in other cultures, written by women there.