PositiveNew York Times\"... focuses on cultural and religious attitudes about menstruation, period poverty and humanitarian efforts to make menstrual products accessible to anyone who needs them ... Organized into five sections that arc toward making visible what has often been regarded as unspeakable, the book begins with an exploration of the stigmas that surround menstruation ... Throughout, Diamant draws on historical examples that are at once horrifying and ridiculous ... Diamant continues that effort around the world, by posing questions of dignity, justice and access, and documenting the ongoing efforts of organizations to address them.Though this book is pitched as an essay collection, it reads more like an overview or progress report. Diamant has compiled a trove of moving anecdotes, statistics and news reports that can seem thrown rather than threaded together. Nevertheless, this hopeful celebration of menstruation will be a useful tool for raising awareness.
Akwaeke Emezi
RaveThe Guardian...remarkable ... The novel begins with the first-person collective voice; \'We\' introduce Ada and map her trajectory from childhood in Nigeria through to her time in college ... In the sections of Freshwater narrated with this technique, the voice is poetic, often incantatory ... a fitting culmination for the extraordinary journey Freshwater charts.