Edna O’Brien, who died on July 27, seemed to be in many ways the quintessential Irish writer. But her career began with a highly acclaimed novel that was widely condemned on the Emerald Isle.

I am a childless woman who has had a very happy, and blessed, life. For over 50 years, I have had a stake in the well-being of my country as well as in its future.

In 'Who’s Afraid of Gender?,' Judith Butler contends that the contemporary backlash to “gender” is an attempt to recapture the transforming power structure and return to the (days when it was simple to use gender to organize power in the world.

What is needed, far more than a perfect abortion law, is a clear focus on the moral failure of a society in which abortion rates are rising rather than falling, in which too many women feel afraid, unable or unwilling to carry pregnancies to term and welcome new life into the world.

It is important to let go of the to-do lists and the pressures, but it’s even more essential to let go of the resentment and blame that sneak in behind hard work and perfectionism.

The characters in ‘20th Century Women’ find themselves torn between embracing the new and retreating into the familiar.