Download or read book Contemporary American Women Writers written by Catherine Rainwater and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ann Beattie, Annie Dillard, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Cynthia Ozick, Grace Paley, Marge Piercy, Anne Redmon, Anne Tyler, and Alice Walker all seem to be especially concerned with narrative management. The ten essays in this book raise new and intriguing questions about the ways these leading women writers appropriate and transform generic norms and ultimately revise literary tradition to make it more inclusive of female experience, vision, and expression. The contributors to this volume discover diverse narrative strategies. Beattie, Dillard, Paley, and Redmon in divergent ways rely heavily upon narrative gaps, surfaces, and silences, often suggesting depths which are lamentably absent from modern experience or which mysteriously elude language. For Kingston and Walker, verbal assertiveness is the focus of narratives depicting the gradual empowerment of female protagonists who learn to speak themselves into existence. Ozick and Tyler disrupt conventional reader expectations of the "anti-novel" and the "family novel," respectively. Finally, Morrison's and Piercy's works reveal how traditional narrative forms such as the Bildungsroman and the "soap opera" are adaptable to feminist purposes. In examining the writings of these ten important women authors, this book illuminates a significant moment in literary history when women's voices are profoundly reshaping American literary tradition.
Download or read book Contemporary American Women Fiction Writers written by Laurie Champion and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2002-11-30 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American women writers have long been creating an extraordinarily diverse and vital body of fiction, particularly in the decades since World War II. Recent authors have benefited from the struggles of their predecessors, who broke through barriers that denied women opportunities for self-expression. This reference highlights American women writers who continue to build upon the formerly male-dominated canon. Included are alphabetically arranged entries for more than 60 American women writers of diverse ethnicity who wrote or published their most significant fiction after World War II. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes:^L^DBLA brief biography^L^DBLA discussion of major works and themes^^DBLA survey of the writer's critical reception^L^DBLA bibliography of primary and secondary sources
Download or read book Contemporary American Women Writers written by Lois Parkinson Zamora and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-29 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection brings together critical essays that examine questions of identity and community in the fiction of contemporary American women writers among them Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisnernos. The essays consider how identities and societies are dramatized in particular works of fiction, and how these works reflect cultural communities outside the fictional frame - often the communities in which their authors live and work. The essays included here concern fictional representations of African American, Latino, Asian American, Native American, Anglo and Euro-American communities and their working interactions in the multicultural United States. Each critic asks, in his or her own way, how a particular writer transforms her social grounding into language and literature. The introduction includes an overview of the range of literary criticism devoted to contemporary American women writers, and an extensive bibliography of complementary critical readings is provided to encourage further study. Undergraduate and postgraduate students of contemporary literature will find the text an invaluable guide to contemporary women's writing in America, and the range of criticism that this has given rise to.
Download or read book The Vintage Book of American Women Writers written by Elaine Showalter and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 850 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries women have been marginalized and overlooked in American literary history. That injustice is corrected in this entertaining and provocative collection of 350 years of poetry and fiction by American women. From Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet to Margaret Fuller to Harriet Beecher Stowe, readers will encounter scores of lesser-known and forgotten writers who fully deserve to be rediscovered and enjoyed by new generations. Our famous women writers, including contemporary stars like Annie Proux and Jhumpa Lahiri, are showcased in their full literary context, offering an epic overview of the canon in one monumental, dazzling volume. This landmark anthology features the best work of our best American women, and was inspired and informed by the author's groundbreaking history celebrating women writers, A Jury of Her Peers.
Download or read book Challenging Realities Magic Realism in Contemporary American Women s Fiction written by M. Ruth Noriega Sánchez and published by Universitat de València. This book was released on 2011-11-28 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Les arrels del realisme màgic en els escrits de Borges i altres autors d'Amèrica Llatina han estat àmpliament reconeguts i ben documentades produint una sèrie d'estudis crítics, molts dels quals figuren en la bibliografia d'aquest treball. Dins d'aquest marc, aquest llibre presenta als lectors una varietat d'escriptores de grups ètnics, conegudes i menys conegudes, i les col·loca en un context literari en el que es tracten tant a nivell individual com a escriptores així com a nivell col·lectiu com a part d'un moviment artístic més ampli. Aquest llibre és el resultat del treball realitzat a les universitats de Sheffield i la de València i representa una valuosa investigació i una important contribució als estudis literaris.
Download or read book Best Contemporary Women s Fiction written by Elizabeth Benedict and published by HMH. This book was released on 2010-12-22 with total page 1868 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Six novels in one volume by today’s most outstanding female writers—includes The Magician’s Assistant, Those Who Save Us, and more. From the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Commonwealth and Bel Canto, to the multiple award-winning author of This Must Be the Place, this collection gathers a half-dozen top-notch literary talents in a treasure trove for fiction lovers. Included: Almost by Elizabeth Benedict chronicles the attempt of writer Sophy Chase to come to terms with the death of her almost ex-husband—who may have committed suicide on the New England resort island where she left him just months before. Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum follows Trudy, a professor of German history, as she investigates her mother’s past in WWII Germany, combining a passionate, doomed love story; a vivid evocation of life during the war; and a poignant mother/daughter drama. The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss is a heartwarming story of a young woman with the rare talent of “gentling” wild horses, and the unexpected and profound connections between people and animals. The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones takes readers inside the hidden world of elite cuisine in modern China, through the story of an American food writer in Beijing who discovers that her late husband may have been leading a double life. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell is a gothic, intricate tale of family secrets, lost lives, and the freedom brought by truth. The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett tells the story of the death of a secretive magician—and how it sets in motion his partner’s journey of self-discovery.
Download or read book Worlds in Our Words written by Marilyn Kallet and published by Pearson. This book was released on 1997 with total page 792 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Encompassing several genres of literary composition, this up-beat, multi-cultural anthology provides an integrated curriculum of contemporary American women writers from diverse backgrounds whose works have recently emerged or made an impact on American literature in the last several decades. Juxtaposing the works of emerging writers with those of American classics, this book comes organized into eight thematic sections - language, family, and multicultural histories, transformation, music/spirituality, work, love, and happiness. It includes a variety of genres in each section - fiction, memoirs, essays, poetry, drama - moving from one to another with ease and a sense of discovery. Presenting an original interview at the end of each section with a distinguished author, it provides clearly and concisely written headnotes for each section. Spanning a broad historical range, from Margaret Walker (1915) to the present day, it includes brief biographies for each author, along with contextual notes for each reading. For professors of American literature and/or women's studies; librarians.
Download or read book Reckonings written by Hertha D. Sweet Wong and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-03-11 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fifteen Native women writers in Reckonings document transgenerational trauma, yet they also celebrate survival. Their stories are vital testaments of our times. Unlike most anthologies that present a single story from many writers, this volume offers a sampling of two to three stories by a select number of both famous and lesser known Native women writers in what is now the United States. Here you will find much-loved stories, many made easily accessible for the first time, and vibrant new stories by well-known contemporary Native American writers as well as fresh emergent voices. These stories share an understanding of Native women's lives in their various modes of loss and struggle, resistance and acceptance, and rage and compassion, ultimately highlighting the individual and collective will to endure against all odds. Reckonings features short stories by: Paula Gunn Allen, Kimberly M. Blaeser, Beth E. Brant, Anita Endrezze, Louise Erdrich, Diane Glancy, Reid Gómez, Janet Campbell Hale, Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, Misha Nogha, Beth H. Piatote, Patricia Riley, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Anna Lee Walters.
Download or read book Unsettling the Bildungsroman written by Stella Bolaki and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2011 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unsettling the Bildungsroman combines genre and cultural theory and offers a cross-ethnic comparative approach to the tradition of the female novel of development and the American coming-of-age narrative. Examines the work of Jamaica Kincaid, Sandra Cisneros, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Audre Lorde.
Download or read book Modern American Women Writers written by Elaine Showalter and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1993-09-27 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring original contributions by scholars in the field of women's studies, this invaluable reference illuminates the lives and works of Maya Angelou, Kate Chopin, Joan Didion, Anne Tyler, Susan Sontag, Gertrude Stein, Zora Neale Hurston, Flannery O'Connor, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and others.
Download or read book Transatlantic Footholds written by Stephanie Palmer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transatlantic Footholds: Turn-of-the-Century American Women Writers and British Reviewers analyses British reviews of American women fiction writers, essayists and poets between the periods of literary domesticity and modernism. The book demonstrates that a variety of American women writers were intelligently read in Britain during this era. British reviewers read American women as literary artists, as women and as Americans. While their notion of who counted as "women" was too limited by race and class, they eagerly read these writers for insight about how women around the world were entering debates on women’s place, the class struggle, religion, Indian policy, childrearing, and high society. In the process, by reading American women in varied ways, reviewers became hybrid and dissenting readers. The taste among British reviewers for American women’s books helped change the predominant direction that high culture flowed across the Atlantic from east-to-west to west-to-east. Britons working in London or far afield were deeply invested in the idea of "America." "America," their responses prove, is a transnational construct.
Download or read book Who s Who in Contemporary Women s Writing written by Jane Eldridge Miller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-23 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unique in its breadth of coverage, Who's Who in Contemporary Women's Writing is a comprehensive, authoritative and enjoyable guide to women's fiction, prose, poetry and drama from around the world in the second half of the twentieth century. Over the course of 1000 entries by over 150 international contributors, a picture emerges of the incredible range of women's writing in our time, from Toni Morrison to Fleur Adcock- all are here. This book includes the established and well-loved but also opens up new worlds of modern literature which may be unfamiliar but are never less than fascinating.
Download or read book Liminality Hybridity and American Women s Literature written by Kristin J. Jacobson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-05-04 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book highlights the multiplicity of American women’s writing related to liminality and hybridity from its beginnings to the contemporary moment. Often informed by notions of crossing, intersectionality, transition, and transformation, these concepts as they appear in American women’s writing contest as well as perpetuate exclusionary practices involving class, ethnicity, gender, race, religion, and sex, among other variables. The collection’s introduction, three unit introductions, fourteen individual essays, and afterward facilitate a process of encounters, engagements, and conversations within, between, among, and across the rich polyphony that constitutes the creative acts of American women writers. The contributors offer fresh perspectives on canonical writers as well as introduce readers to new authors. As a whole, the collection demonstrates American women’s writing is “threshold writing,” or writing that occupies a liminal, hybrid space that both delimits borders and offers enticing openings.
Download or read book American Women Writing Fiction written by Mickey Pearlman and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-03-17 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American literature is no longer the refuge of the solitary hero. Like the society it mirrors, it is now a far richer, many-faceted explication of a complicated and diverse society—racially, culturally, and ethnically interwoven and at the same time fractured and fractious. Ten women writing fiction in America today—Toni Cade Bambara, Joan Didion, Louise Erdrich, Gail Godwin, Mary Gordon, Alison Lurie, Joyce Carol Oates, Jayne Anne Phillips, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, and Mary Lee Settle—represent that geographic, ethnic, and racial diversity that is distinctively American. Their differing perspectives on literature and the American experience have produced Erdrich's stolid North Dakota plainswomen; Didion's sun-baked dreamers and screamers; the urban ethnics—Irish, Jewish, and black—of Gordon, Schaeffer, and Bambara; Oates's small-town, often violent, neurotics; Lurie's intellectual sophisticates; and the southern survivors and victims, male and female, of Phillips, Settle, and Godwin. The ten original essays in this collection focus on the traditional themes of identity, memory, family, and enclosure that pervade the fiction of these writers. The fictional women who emerge here, as these critics show, are often caught in the interwoven strands of memory, perceive literal and emotional space as entrapping, find identity elusive and frustrating, and experience the interweaving of silence, solitude, and family in complex patterns. Each essay in this collection is followed by bibliographies of works by and about the writer in question that will be invaluable resources for scholars and general readers alike. Here is a readable critical discussion of ten important contemporary novelists who have broadened the pages of American literature to reflect more clearly the people we are.
Download or read book Bridges to Memory written by Maria Rice Bellamy and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2015-12-04 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the development of a new genre in contemporary American literature that was engendered in the civil rights, feminist, and ethnic empowerment struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, Bridges to Memory shows how these movements authorized African American and ethnic American women writers to reimagine the traumatic histories that form their ancestral inheritance and define their contemporary identities. Drawing on the concept of postmemory—a paradigm developed to describe the relationship that children of Holocaust survivors have to their parents' traumatic experiences—Maria Bellamy examines narrative representations of this inherited form of trauma in the work of contemporary African American and ethnic American women writers. Focusing on Gayl Jones's Corregidora, Octavia Butler's Kindred, Phyllis Alesia Perry's Stigmata, Cristina García's Dreaming in Cuban, Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman, and Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker, Bellamy shows how cultural context determines the ways in which traumatic history is remembered and transmitted to future generations. Taken together, these narratives of postmemory manifest the haunting presence of the past in the present and constitute an archive of textual witness and global relevance that builds cross-cultural understanding and ethical engagement with the suffering of others.
Download or read book Claiming a Tradition written by Mary Jo Bona and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mary Jo Bona reconstructs the literary history and examines the narrative techniques of eight Italian American women's novels from 1940 to the present. Largely neglected until recently, these women's family narratives compel a reconsideration of what it means to be a woman and an ethnic in America. Bona discusses the novels in pairs according to their focus on Italian American life. She first examines the traditions of italianitá (a flavor of things Italian) that inform and enhance works of fiction. The novelists in that tradition were Mari Tomasi (Like Lesser Gods, 1949) and Marion Benasutti (No Steady Job for Papa, 1966). Bona then turns to later novels that highlight the Italian American belief in the family's honor and reputation. Conflicts between generations, specifically between autocratic fathers and their children, are central to Octavia Waldo's 1961 A Cup of the Sun and Josephine Gattuso Hendin's 1988 The Right Thing to Do. Even when writers choose to steer away from the familial focus, Bona notes, their developmental narratives trace the reintegration of characters suffering from a crisis of cultural identity. Relating the characters' struggles to their relationship to the family, Bona examines Diana Cavallo's 1961 A Bridge of Leaves and Dorothy Bryant's 1978 Miss Giardino. Bona then discusses two innovative novels—Helen Barolini's 1979 Umbertina and Tina De Rosa's 1980 Paper Fish—both of which feature a granddaughter who invokes her grandmother, a godparent figure. Through Barolini's feminist and De Rosa's modernist perspectives, both novels present a young girl developing artistically. Closing with a discussion of the contemporary terrain Italian American women traverse, Bona examines such topics as sexual identity when it meets cultural identity and the inclusion of italianitá when Italian American identity is not central to the story. Italian American women writers, she concludes, continue in the 1980s and 1990s to focus on the interplay between cultural identity and women's development.
Download or read book African American Women Writers Historical Fiction written by A. Nunes and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-05-09 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores African American historical fiction written by women in the last four decades of the twentieth century. Nunes' approach to the texts aims at emphasizing the narrative and thematic achievements of individual novels set in the context of the main trends and developments of the contemporary African American historical novel.
