Desire: Women Write About Wanting

Edited by Lisa Solod Warren
Publisher: Seal Press
ISBN-10: 1580052142
ISBN-13: 9781580052146
280 pages
Paperback
$15.95 US
Rights: World

Excerpt from the Introduction

Desire, a thing at once ephemeral and yet so real that it can cause physical pain, palpitations, breathlessness, anxiety, depression, regret. Whether we give in to it, ignore it, or try to channel it into something we deem more appropriate, it is always with us. Desire can spring from the heart, the groin, the soul, or some combination of all three; it is merely, and not so merely, an intense want: a want that can feel overwhelming, irrational, confounding, and even too large to imagine giving in to.s women, we have been encouraged to subvert our desires, to deny their existence, or to fulfill them in ways that we think might not be so . . . well, desirous. To fulfill them in ways more suitable, if at all. Many of us push down our desires so far that they become unrecognizable—but desire is selfish; desire is about us. And we’re not supposed to think about us. At least not until we have thought about everyone else first. Desire speaks to a privation, a lack, an emptiness in what is, and the knowledge that there is something out there that might well fill that space. Everyone desires something: a room of one’s one, an Other, a place that feels real, independence (financial or otherwise), a way out, a child, an ideal, a thing they may not even be able to put their finger on. If we never speak of our deepest desires, we still have them— we have always had them. Here, in this anthology, women who have agreed to reveal their desires are beginning a confession in general. But this beginning is just that. My hope is that you will read the essays here and some of them will resonate with your own desires, or at least inspire you to think about what some of your deeper desires are. I wish for these essays to encourage women everywhere to start speaking up about what they want. Not that confessing or speaking up is easy. Some of the women I contacted to write about their desires demurred, even though their excitement about the project was palpable. One was afraid of what her children would say if they read her essay; another was simply afraid to put voice to what she really wants. Another, whose essay is in this collection, declined, after much soul-searching, to reveal a very personal episode in her life for fear that those reading it would think badly of her. Others struggled with their most real and honest voices, illuminating how they are so accustomed to putting their needs and wants in a perspective that others would not find offensive. But all of the women who write here were thrilled, ultimately, to confess, to finally be able to give public voice to what they felt they wanted most. They embraced their needs and wants and then spilled them out onto the pages. There is real and potent honesty here...