Gena Corea

I am a writer and Focusing trainer living and co-creating workshops in a retreat center in the woods of Southern Vermont.

HarperCollins published my three books. A line from the poem “People” by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, read as a teenager and never forgotten, permeates these books: “Not people die but worlds die in them.” The knowledge that each human being is huge, complex, unique, and of infinite worth guides my work.   Researching in the obstetrics-gynecology and reproductive technology literature for my books, I saw women reduced to miniscule aspects of themselves. A woman was a “reproductive vehicle,” “clinical material,” in menopause “living decay,” in the AIDS epidemic a “vector of disease.” I knew this wasn’t so. I knew that women were much more powerful beings than those male medicine portrayed us as.

In my last book, I interweave stories of women facing AIDS, as patients, physicians, chaplains, state officials, drug counselors and advocates with sections on the political context of the epidemic.   

The New York Times Book Review listed The Invisible Epidemic: The Story of Women and AIDS in its Notable Books of the Year.

“Sure to be a classic like Randy Shilts’ And the Band Played On,” Library Journal wrote of The Invisible Epidemic, “Corea’s work is highly recommended for all collections.”

My second book, The Mother Machine: Reproductive Technologies from Artificial Insemination to the Artificial Womb, was published in Japan, Germany and Britain as well as in the United States.

Quotations from my book were integrated with art work in The Holocaust Project by artist Judy Chicago, photographer Donald Woodman and artisans around the country. Opening at the Spertus Museum in Chicago in 1993, The Holocaust Project was a visual exploration of the meaning of the Holocaust for contemporary people.

The New York Times Book Review selected my first book, The Hidden Malpractice: How American Medicine Treats Women As Patients and Professionals for its annual Notable Books of the year list.

Discussing issues raised in my books, I have appeared on more than 250 television and radio programs—including the Donahue show, the Today show on NBC and Fresh Air with Terry Gross on PBS.

I have been featured in a number of film documentaries, including High Tech Babies on the PBS Nova series; On the Eighth Day: Perfecting Mother Nature, a Canadian film; in Germany, Und Mit Geistesstarke Tu Ich Wunder Auch and Bucherjournal III; and most recently, in 2006, in France with When Men Are Pregnant.

With four other feminists, I founded the Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering (FINRRAGE) and organized the Women’s Emergency Conference on the New Reproductive Technologies, held in Vallinge, Sweden in 1985.

I was also co-founder, with Janice Raymond and Jeremy Rifkin, of the National Coalition Against Surrogacy. We held press conferences and testified at numerous hearings in opposition to the legalized sale of women’s bodies for reproductive purposes.

Traveling the world as a feminist activist, I gave speeches and media interviews throughout the U.S. and Europe and in Brazil, Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Australia and South Africa.

During these years, I delivered keynote addresses at the first national women’s conferences on the new reproductive technologies in Germany, Austria, Spain and Australia. In frequent trips to Germany and Austria, I gave speeches in German. (In Hannover, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Sexualforschung once gave me a standing ovation—not for what I was saying—but for managing to pronounce three foot-long German words in a row.)

At the invitation of the World Health Organization, I chaired a five-day meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark where “technodocs” and techno-critics conducted a stormy evaluation of in vitro fertilization (IVF).

In Paris, I debated a leading IVF physician before an audience of some 2,000 technodocs at the opening plenary session of their 7th World Congress on In Vitro Fertilization and Assisted Procreation.

The Law Reform Commission of New South Wales in Sydney and the Victoria Law Reform Commission in Melbourne flew me to Australia to address them on the regulation of the new reproductive technologies.

Many of the speeches I delivered during these years were subsequently published as chapters in some 20 books. While most of these anthologies were published in the U.S., two were Australian (Infertility: Women Speak Out, 1989; The Baby Machine, 1988), three French (Sortir la Maternite du Laboratoire, 1988; L’Ovaire Dose: Les Nouvelles Methodes de Procreation, 1989; De la Parente a l’Eugensme, 1987), one Austrian (Schone Neue Mannerwelt, 1986), one Canadian (Misconceptions: Choice and the Construction of the New Reproductive and Genetic Technologies, 1993), and three German (Frauen Gegen Gentechnik und Reproduktionstechnik, 1987; Sexualpolitische Kontroversen, 1987; Gen-Technologies: Die Neue Soziale Waffe, 1985).

These writings are widely quoted as a search in Googles’ Books reveals.

In my early twenties, I reported for two Massachusetts daily newspapers, The Berkshire Eagle and The Holyoke Transcript. While at the Transcript (1971-1973), I launched and edited a new section of the paper, Tomorrow’s Woman, featuring investigative reporting on women’s status in the city. One of the columns I wrote for that page is reprinted in the college textbook Issues in Feminism 1980, 1991) edited by Shelia Roth. This same column, “I Have a Motherland,” became part of the audio-cassette program, “Celebration of Women’s History,” produced by the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1986.

My investigation of sexism in public school history textbooks and the reactions of students to that investigation were written up in Sexism in School and Society by Nancy Frazier and Myra Sadker, Harper and Row, 1973.

After leaving the newspaper and while working on The Hidden Malpractice, I wrote and published 75 Frankly Feminist columns for The New Republic Feature Syndicate. (The other two columnists for the Syndicate were TRB and Ralph Nadar.)

Over the years my articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Mother Jones, Ms., Commonweal, The Progressive, and Glamour.

I’ve studied West African dance extensively and performed at various venues. A Continuum enthusiast, I often incorporate movement into my workshops.

Currently I facilitate inner growth and Focusing workshops for men serving long terms in a New England prison. Focusing is a specific skill that moves beyond intellect and linear thinking to the deepest level of awareness within the body. It is at this body level, unfamiliar to most people, where change in unresolved problems can take place.

My work in the prison underlines for me that prisoners, like each of us, are huge, complex, unique and of infinite worth.

PO Box 42
West Dummerston, Vt. 05357