My Children, My Gold: Meetings with Women of the Fourth World

Taylor (The Children Who Sleep by the River) traveled to seven countries, from Australia to Brazil, where she interviewed and shared in the lives of seven members of the group she terms ``the Fourth World.'' What she found were women who, despite differences in race, class and culture, are united in their attempts to preserve themselves and their children in the face of poverty, crushing social restrictions and male profligacy. Taylor has the novelist's flair for picking out the little details that give each profile its heartrending force, as when an ailing Ugandan woman with four young sons describes her husband's death from AIDS. An Indian widow, forbidden by the Hindu religion to remarry, eat meat or attend family celebrations, walks more than 20 kilometers a day in searing heat to sell fish door-to-door. Unable to go out except for infrequent shopping expeditions, for fear that her ``looseness'' will mar her daughters' chances for marriage, a Cairo divorcee stays in her tiny apartment, obese and diabetic like many of her peers. The little daughter of a Chinese divorcee, when asked if she remembers her father, responds: ``He doesn't want Mother any more because I'm a girl.'' These stunningly immediate pieces underscore the fact that, despite their gains in certain societies, women the world over have a long uphill climb ahead of them. (Feb.)