A Simple Program: A Contemporary Translation of the Book, Alcoholics Anonymous - Softcover

"J", "J"

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786881364 ISBN 13: 9780786881369

Publisher: Hyperion, 1996

Synopsis

The first and only modernization of the "bible" of Alcoholics Anonymous, A Simple Program provides an accessible, gender-equal translation for today's readers while maintaining the book's complete core text, which serves as the basis of all 12-step programs.

About this title

About the Author

"J" is a 12-year member of Alcoholics Anonymous and an experienced editor, writer, and translator. In keeping with the traditions of A.A., "J" wishes to remain anonymous.

Reviews

The unnamed preparer of this reworking of the first 11 chapters of the "Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous has responded to the discomfort many, especially women, are said to feel with that text's exclusively male pronouns. Working and publishing without the endorsement of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, "J" has mostly just varied the genders of pronouns but also has substituted, in the manner of much current modern speech, they, their, etc., for he, his, etc. "J" also hopes the AA organization will do its own gender-varying "translation" of the entire Big Book (what "J" does not rework, because there is no need to, is the dozens of personal testimonies of recovered alcoholics that fill out the full text). Meanwhile, here are the basics of the AA approach made gender inclusive. Ray Olson

Since 1939, the book Alcoholics Anonymous ("The Big Book") collectively composed by the first 100 persons to recover through that program, has been said to have rescued millions of formerly hopeless addicts from the claws of their hellish addiction. But while alcoholism's horrors have remained unchanged, the demography of its victims has altered. When the Big Book was written, most known alcoholics were male; accordingly, its linguistic and social orientations are pointedly gender-emphatic. But now almost half of all alcoholics seeking help in AA are women, and chapters such as "To Wives" (without an equivalent "To Husbands") present, for some women, yet another stumbling block to an already hard-won freedom. This, the first translation of the core 164 pages of the Big Book, is written by a sober 12-year member of AA. Except for seamless and commendably transparent gender-balancing (e.g., sans the grotesque "s/he" or the infamous Oxfordian "Mother/Father God"), some replacements of obsolete 1930s slang, and a few substitutions of the phrase "Higher Power" for the word "God," it remains indistinguishable from the life-saving original. Consequently, A Simple Program belongs immediately next to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA World Svces., 1991) on the shelves of every library. Indispensable.?Bill Piekarski, Southwestern Coll. Lib., Chula Vista, Cal.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hyperion
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786881364
• ISBN 13: 9780786881369
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192