Nuestros Cuerpos,
Nuestras Vidas
(Our Bodies Ourselves)

Introduction by Rocio Duque

In 1969 a group of twelve women got together at a workshop about “women and their bodies”. They spoke about their medical experiences and about their own bodies. Eventually, they decided to form a Doctor's Group in Boston and they produced a book that, over the years, has become a classic text: Our Bodies, Ourselves (Nuestros cuerpos, nuestras vidas).

Published first as a book in 1973 (following a 1970 pamphlet), Our Bodies Ourselves was first translated into Spanish in 1976. Since then, the book has been translated into seventeen languages and is available in Braille as well. It has been published in 15 countries and it is estimated that as many as 20 million people have read it.

It is certain that the growth of the feminist movement during those years not only gave impetus to the exploration of sexuality and women's reproductive health, but also triggered the search to develop a new attitude that challenged the view of the medical establishment as all-knowing and of patients as passive receivers of their diagnoses and remedies. This new attitude promoted the active participation of patients, a greater understanding of the relationship between patients and medical institutions, and an insistence in the necessity of a comprehensive and scientific understanding of ones own body.

Published by 7 Stories Press, Nuestros cuerpos, nuestras vidas provides the women of our communities with a valuable tool not only for the betterment of their health, but also for evaluating, understanding and eventually modifying their relationships with the entire set of environmental circumstances that affect their bodies, their well-being, and their relationship with the world.

7 Stories Institute, along with the Boston Women's Health Collective, has conducted workshops in which both men and women have expressed their opinions, questions and anxieties about topics including sexuality, AIDS, menopause, early pregnancies, birth control and domestic violence. On the 29th and 30th of April, 2005, two workshops took place in New York in collaboration with the Asociaci—n Tepeyac and the collective Trabajadoras Por La Paz of the South Bronx. We present here a snapshot of what took place there.

Rocio Duque
for Seven Stories Institute
June 22, 2005