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Article: Ms. Captivity.(Essay)
- Article from:
- The Women's Review of Books
- Article date:
- March 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Old City Publishing, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Picture this: a prison camp in Siberia with 2,000 inmates, twenty miles outside of Novosibirsk, the third largest city in Russia. The women wake at 5:45 for eight hours of sewing police uniforms in the textile factory They walk across the yard, wrapped for the cold in wool as drab and gray as the sky. There's no hot water. They subsist on a diet of mashed peas and bread.
Now jump to this: an auditorium filled with two hundred people. Balloons decorate the stage. The steps to the podium are newly carpeted. It's the same camp, but during the annual Miss Spring contest. Behind the scenes, nine women, one selected by each cell block anxiously prepare. For round one, ...