Palgrave Macmillan Journals is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to Feminist Review. www.jstor.org ® 118 Feminist Review identity and experience' where AIDS is explored, amongst other things, as a technology of production and re- production in relation to an AIDS archive that is already too vast for a single reader/researcher to absorb. In Jeff Nunokawa's, "'All the sad young men": AIDS and the work of mourning', AIDS is analyzed as liter- ary conceit and as metaphor, re- establishing the link between text and world text, a link which Cindy Patton in 'Visualizing safe sex' takes up at the point where 'pedagogy and pornography collide'. Each essay is then dedicated in its intention to intersect theory with politics and each is to varying de- grees successful. Still, at some point the question that needs to be asked by any reader is, where do we go from here? How do we take the essays and the theories and the thesis out of the book and back into the community? It is a question which Ed Cohen asks in relation to the academy; how should 'we', as theorists, academics, students, situated both inside and out of the academy formulate and contribute to (should we even want Polish Women, Solidarity and Feminism Anna Reading Macmillan: London, 1992 ISBN 0 333 55063 3 £47.50Hbk This book is the product of a Western feminist's collision with Polish cul- tural reality and an attempt to understand that reality. It is also a record of a personal voyage of dis- covery. The structure of the book mirrors this process of approxi- mation - as the author puts it: mov- ing from the perception of an out- sider (someone beyond the fixed boundarylgranica) to a position of more tentative inclusion (within shifting borders/kresy ). Thus, the first section comprises material to?) a lesbian and gay studies pro- gramme? It is the question women's studies has had to ask itself, is still asking itself, or in some cases, has stopped asking itself- absorption or ghettoization, how much of the choice is even ours? The debate is as pressing in Britain where resource centres and courses are just begin- ning to be established as it continues to be in the US where resources are more extensive but the homophobic backlash against such advance- ments is more vituperative. It is a question the book takes up but does not really answer, preferring per- haps to leave conclusions to the reader. On the whole, however, the book is an excellent introduction to some of the very best in contemporary lesbian and gay theory, committed, versatile and self-critical. Thanks to the current publishing vogue in queer theory (a phenomenon subject to its own speculation and irony) it will, almost certainly, not be the last. Clare Whatling culled from existing 'accounts' of women's position in Polish culture and society, while the second, larger section gives voice to Polish women themselves. The picture of subordi- nation and oppression painted at the outset becomes more nuanced as women themselves speak about their lives. The final section of the book offers the most detailed account to date of the various feminist groups which have recently come into exist- ence. The book has much to offer. First, it draws an uncompromising picture of the sexism which satu- rates Polish culture - historically, linguistically, socially and in litera- ture; under state socialism and in Solidarity. The author's linguistic and literary insights and references