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The Oxford book of women's writing in the United States

Format: Print Book 1995
Availability: Available at 3 Libraries 3 of 3 copies

Available (3)
Location Collection Call #
CLP - Main Library Second Floor - Non-fiction PS508.W7 O95 1995
Location  CLP - Main Library
 
Collection  Second Floor - Non-fiction
 
Call Number  PS508.W7 O95 1995
 
 
Monroeville Public Library Non-fiction 810.8 O
Location  Monroeville Public Library
 
Collection  Non-fiction
 
Call Number  810.8 O
 
 
Sewickley Public Library Nonfiction 810.8 OXF 1995
Location  Sewickley Public Library
 
Collection  Nonfiction
 
Call Number  810.8 OXF 1995
 
 

Summary
Provocative and compulsively readable, lively, engaging, and brilliantly representative, The Oxford Book of Women's Writing in the United States presents short stories, poems, essays, plays, speeches, performance pieces, erotica, diaries, correspondence, and even a few recipes from nearly one
hundred of our best women writers.
Reveling in the awareness that the best U.S. women's writing is, quite simply, some of the best in the world, editors Linda Wagner-Martin and Cathy N. Davidson have chosen selections spanning four centuries and reflecting the rich variety of American women's lives. The collection embraces the
perspectives of age and youth, the traditional and the revolutionary, the public and the private. Here is Judith Sargent Murray's 1790 essay "On the Equality of the Sexes," journalist Martha Gellhorn's "Last Words on Vietnam, 1987," and Mary Gordon's homage to the ghosts of Ellis Island, "More Than
Just a Shrine"; powerful short stories by Zora Neale Hurston, Edith Wharton, Cynthia Ozick, and Toni Morrison; letters from Abigail Adams, Sarah Moore Grimke[accent], Emma Goldman, and Georgia O'Keeffe; Alice B. Toklas's recipe "Bass for Picasso," and erotic offerings from Anais Nin and Rita Mae
Brown. The moving autobiography of Zitkala- Sa[accent], whose mother was a Sioux, tells us more about "otherness" than any sociological treatise, while Janice Mirikitani's and Nellie Wong's poems about being young Asian-American women, like Alice Walker's meditation on the beauty of growing old,
speak to all readers.
A thought-provoking introduction and descriptive headnotes explore the history of women's writing in ways that help the reader to understand the American women who have used language to change their worlds and to remember the past, and as a means of etching their deepest, fondest dreams. A joy to
read, The Oxford Book of Women's Writing in the United States is filled with eye-opening and unexpected selections. It is the perfect book for anyone fascinated by women's writing and women's lives.
Contents
Part 1. Short fiction. Tom's husband / Sarah Orne Jewett
Tony's wife / Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson
The revolt of "Mother" / Mary Wilkins Freeman
The yellow wall-paper / Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
A male Magdalene, from Samantha vs. Josiah / Marietta Holley
A pair of silk stockings / Kate Chopin
The other two / Edith Wharton
Seventeen syllables / Hisaye Yamamoto
Freedom / Nella Larsen
Sweat / Zora Neale Hurston
O yes / Tillie Olsen
A late encounter with the enemy / Flannery O'Connor
A worn path / Eudora Welty
The shawl / Cynthia Ozick
Extenuating circumstances / Joyce Carol Oates
Miss Clairol / Helena Maria Viramontes
Recitatif / Toni Morrison
In the American society / Gish Jen
May's lion / Ursula K. Le Guin
Life in the iron-mills / Rebecca Harding Davis
Old Mrs. Harris / Willa Cather
Part 2. Poetry. Poetry from the beginning ; Contemporary poetry
Part 3. Public lives. Women and the nation ; The struggle for understanding ; From the personal to the political
Part 4. Acting out. Overtones / Alice Gerstenberg
Trifles : a play in one act / Susan Glaspell
Bitter cane / Genny Lim
Ain't I a woman? / Sojourner Truth
Men in your life / Alice Childress
from United States / Laurie Anderson
Roslyn Malamud : the coup, from Fires in the mirror / Anna Deavere Smith
Native American ritual
Kopis'taya (a gathering of spirits) / Paula Gunn Allen
Naming power / Wendy Rose
The foot-washing / George Ella Lyon
from The women of Brewster Place / Gloria Naylor
The sixth work : rituals for the extended family, from Jambalaya / Luisah Teish
The ceremonies of community, from The telling / E.M. Broner
Part 5. Private lives. The republic of women's letters ; Women in the nineteenth century ; Turning the century ; Modern voices
Part 6. Bodily pleasures. Recipes ; Erotica.
Published Reviews
Booklist Review: "Editors Wagner-Martin and Davidson pay tribute to the vibrant variety of American women's lives and writing in this meandering and happily idiosyncratic anthology. Thankfully, it's no longer necessary to rescue women's writing from marginalization, so a collection such as this one, as the editors unabashedly explain, can "luxuriate in some of the best writing U.S. women have produced." They go on, free of false modesty, to say that their selections represent "quite simply, some of the best writing in the world." No argument there. These upbeat editors have also defined writing in its broadest sense, choosing their favorites from fiction, essays, poems, letters, diaries, speeches and plays, and even recipes. And they've created a wonderful spectrum that stretches from Edith Wharton to Toni Morrison, Emily Dickinson to Adrienne Rich, Emma Goldman to Anna Quindlen, Louisa May Alcott to Laurie Anderson. --Donna Seaman"
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Publisher's Weekly Review: "Wagner-Martin (Telling Women's Lives) and Davidson (Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji) offer a generous survey of American women's voices that is as remarkable for its quality as it is for its breadth. Asserting that much writing by women has been neglected because ``it did not fit into existing literary categories,'' they have organized their selections‘written by almost 100 writers from the colonial era to the present‘into six spacious categories: short fiction (from Sarah Orne Jewett to Helena María Viramontes); poetry (Anne Bradstreet to Carolyn Forché); public lives (Revolutionary War-era feminist Judith Sargent Murray to Anna Quindlen); acting out (a speech by Sojourner Truth, an excerpt from Anna Deveare Smith's performance piece Fires in the Mirror); private lives (personal letters of Abigail Adams, Emma Goldman and Mary McCarthy); and bodily pleasures (Alice B. Toklas's Haschich Fudge recipe; surprisingly, Emily Dickinson's poetry is included in the category of ``Erotica.''). The forms include short stories, novellas and poems as well as more informal chants, meditations and monologues. The entries also are cross-referenced by topic: childhood, identity, love relationships, etc. Read front to back, the book dwells at first on women's power struggles with loutish, insensitive men, but it segues effectively into explorations of sexuality, ethnic and political issues and internal conflicts. Some of the pieces, such as Abigail Adams's letter to John (``I desire you would Remember the Ladies'') highlight what women have been able (and unable) to say with language at various points in American history; others, like Cynthia Ozick's ``The Shawl,'' testify to what women can do with language. As textbook, reference work or cover-to-cover recreational reading, this collection is an outstanding editorial achievement. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved"
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Additional Information
Subjects American literature -- Women authors.
Women -- United States -- Literary collections.
Publisher Oxford [England] ; New York :Oxford University Press,1995
Other Titles Women's writing in the United States
Contributors Wagner-Martin, Linda.
Davidson, Cathy N., 1949-
Language English
Notes Includes index.
Description x, 596 pages ; 23 cm
ISBN 0195087062 (alk. paper)
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