Part 4 Summary

"My Vagina was my Village" The author introduces this monologue with a description of how a photograph of female victims of the Bosnian war (circa 1993) led her to a determination to interview such women. She also describes how her interviews led her into a raging determination to raise awareness of rape as a weapon of war, and how shocked she was to learn how many rapes take place in the United States, a country supposedly not at war. In the monologue itself, stark images of brutal violation (by guns, broom handles, and a week of violent penises) alternate with poetically beautiful images of how the speaker viewed her vagina before the war. "My vagina," the speaker says, "a live wet water village. They invaded it, butchered it and burned it down. I do not touch now. I do not visit. I live someplace...