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Word Festival, Christchurch NZ, 2016

A stripper, a sex worker and a go go dancer walk into a book festival and … talked about their work… Jodi Sh. Doff talked about a fox hole mentality. Her experience in 1970s New York was different than the others who worked in a job that had been legalised or decriminalised. 70s New York strip clubs and brothels were run by the mob. The women were at the bottom and they had to look after themselves as no one else would. Jodi Sh. Doff read out an extraordinary piece of writing that was raw, scary and horrific.

Hos, Hookers, Callgirls and Rentboys (SoftSkull, July 2009)

Tiger Beatdown : Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Lady Business Book Review / By Sady Doyle

Still, if the anthology doesn’t offend you at one point or another, it’s probably not doing its job. And that is absolutely fine, considering that it contains so much great writing.Jodi Sh. Doff, in “Lele,” shows that she can get a whole world – the world of “the pre-Disney Times Square topless business” – across in a few pages, or even a few sentences: a stripper is stabbed by her husband, while she dances; the bartender wipes blood off the bottles and keeps serving.

The common allegation against radical feminists is that they cast all sex workers as victims, regardless of what sex workers themselves say about that; the common allegation against sex-positive feminists is that they insist on seeing everything in terms of sunshine and sparkles and empowerment, even when the facts are brutal. This book is what it is – and it is excellent – because it explicitly rejects party lines.

New York Times : Sunday Book Review cover : Sunday, August 23, 2009
Meet, Pay, Love / By Toni Bentley

“Lele,” a piece by Jodi Sh. Doff, who “grew up in the suburbs as someone else entirely,” recalls Henry Miller’s in-your-face exposition. She tells of a night at Diamond Lil’s on Canal Street, where “Viva’s sitting onstage, legs spread wide.” While her customer is buried and busy, she holds a cigarette in one hand, a drink in the other, and chitchats with a girlfriend about another girlfriend. “Every two minutes or so Viva taps him on the head and he hands her a 20 from a stack of bills he’s holding, never looking up.” We see in this wonderful set piece the whole money/sex connection enacted with raw charm and an immediacy that reaches far beyond this strip club, as the man’s stack of 20s, one by one, becomes hers. Multitasking Viva holds them “folded lengthwise in her cigarette hand.”

Chicago Now : Saturday, August 15, 2009
Tale of two cities: Sex Worker Literati / By Anna Pulley

The sex industry is often glamorized (like the new HBO series “Hung”) or villainized (by many). Rarely is there any in-between on what the sex industry actually looks like, so it was fascinating to see the scope of performances [at Sex Worker Literati, a new reading and performance series hosted on the first Thursday of the month in New York City’s SoHo district], the wildly different experiences and the inspirational messages that sprang forth from each of the performers….The humorous requests and political gripes were tempered by Jodi Sh. Doff, who read a beautiful, heart-breaking piece about a 15-year-old stripper, once vibrant and innocent, claimed by what she referred to as “the machine” – the underworld of drugs, sex and violence in the 80s, where one’s own survival outweighed all else.

New York Press Review : Tuesday, August 11, 2009
The Happy Hook Book /Sex workers spill the beans in smart new anthology / By Gerry Visco

At a packed house at Happy Ending, former stripper and prostitute Jodi Sh. Doff, reminds us that she worked during an era when the term “sex worker” hadn’t yet been invented. Her writing is hardboiled; Diamond Lil’s on Canal Street “stinks of stale beer, cheap whisky, smoke and cunt.” Doff recounts the tragedy of the brutal murder of Lele, a beautiful young stripper she worked with at a topless bar in “the Deuce,” as 42nd Street used to be known pre-Disney. It was an abandoned, litter-choked lot, full of “dog shit, broken bottles, neon, used condoms, freaks, vermin, predators.” Ah, the good old days.

Bearing Life : Women’s Writings on Childlessness (Feminist Press, 2000)

Kirkus Reviews, 2000

Over 50 women contribute to this engaging collection of essays, fiction, and poetry exploring childlessness. American Book Review editor Ratner (The Lion’s Share, 1991, etc.) proposes to discuss and legitimize alternatives to motherhood through the work of outstanding female writers. While the expected topics of abortion and infertility are central here, dozens of less-discussed scenarios of choice and circumstance are explored as well. In Jodi Sh. Doff’sTie Me Up, Tie Me Off” a young woman, afraid she has inherited her father’s abusive tendencies, chooses hysterectomy. …The collection does not want for depth or imagination, and its sprawling content helps shape a topic defined in name only by absence. An intricate and important anthology, ultimately using childlessness to develop a study of art, female identity, and self-understanding.

 


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