Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy is an Indian novelist, writer and activist. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her first novel, The God of Small Things, and, in 2002, the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize. Ever since, she has concentrated her writing on political issues. These include the Narmada Dam project, India's Nuclear Weapons, corrupt power company Enron's activities in India. She is a figure-head of the anti-globalization/alter-globalization movement and a vehement critic of neo-imperialism.

More info: Wikipedia, her webpage, zmag, sawnet, ratical, narmada, World Tribunal on Iraq video, Come September video and discussion, Czech econnect link and iliteratura link, Sydney 2004 video.

Eve Ensler

"When we give in the world what we want the most, we heal the broken part inside each of us."

"Happiness exists in action, it exists in telling the truth and saying what your truth is, and it exists in giving away what you want the most."

Eve Ensler

Eve Ensler is an American playwright most famous for her books The Vagina Monologues and The Good Body, and also a founder of the global movement V-Day working to stop violence against women and girls. In this talk from 2004, Eve Ensler speaks about how she 'found' vaginae and how she started talking about vaginae with women (an innocent conversation with her friend about her 'old and dry vagina' and more and more women wanting to talk about their experience of being abused, raped, beaten).

She talks about the V-Day movement where women would gather and share their experience and fight against violence contra women. She calls "Vagina Warriors" women (or vagina friendly men) who witnessed or suffered a terrible violence, and are fighting so that this does not happen anyone else.

She goes on and speaks about women she has met on her journeys and who have been helping other women against violence.

The story of Agnes from Kenya was most fascinating for me: Agnes was mutilated when she was 10 years old. At that time she decided that she would fight against this practice. When she became older, she created an anatomical sculpture of women's body showing vagina and vagina replacement parts. She was showing what a vagina looks like and what a mutilated vagina looks like. She was traveling through the country educating people.

In 8 years Agnes saved 1500 girls from being cut, she created a alternative ritual for girls coming off age without being mutilated. When Agnes received a jeep for her travels from the V-Day movement, in that year she saved 4500 girls from being mutilated.