Arab Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide, 1873–1999
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Arab women’s writing in the modern age began with ‘A’isha al-Taymuriya, Warda al-Yaziji, Zaynab Fawwaz, and other nineteenth-century pioneers in Egypt and the Levant. This unique study—first published in Arabic in 2004—looks at the work of those pioneers and then traces the development of Arab women’s literature through the end of the twentieth century, and also includes a meticulously researched, comprehensive bibliography of writing by Arab women. In the first section, in nine essays that cover the Arab Middle East from Morocco to Iraq and Syria to Yemen, critics and writers from the Arab world examine the origin and evolution of women’s writing in each country in the region, addressing fiction, poetry, drama, and autobiographical writing. The second part of the volume contains bibliographical entries for over 1,200 Arab women writers from the last third of the nineteenth century through 1999. Each entry contains a short biography and a bibliography of each author’s published works. This section also includes Arab women’s writing in French and English, as well as a bibliography of works translated into English. With its broad scope and extensive research, this book is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in Arabic literature, women’s studies, or comparative literature. Contributors: Emad Abu Ghazi, Radwa Ashour, Mohammed Berrada, Ferial J. Ghazoul, Subhi Hadidi, Haydar Ibrahim, Yumna al-‘Id, Su‘ad al-Mani‘, Iman al-Qadi, Amina Rachid, Huda al-Sadda, Hatim al-Sakr.
Publisher
Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press
Contemporary American Women Poets
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Feminist efforts have recovered the works of early women poets, and much of this rediscovered work now appears in anthologies. As a result, women poets writing today must not only struggle against a largely male tradition, but must also confront existing feminist expectations. In mapping the achievements of contemporary American women poets, this reference helps liberate them from restrictive conventional views and illustrates the tremendous diversity of their works. Included are alphabetically arranged entries on nearly 70 American women poets who published significant works after 1945. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and presents a short biography, a discussion of major works and themes, a survey of the poet's critical reception, and primary and secondary bibliographies. Included poets come from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds, geographical regions, and social classes. Some, such as Maya Angelou and Adrienne Rich, have received significant critical attention, while others are only beginning to attract interest and acclaim.
Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers [Two Volumes]
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This book surveys the world of African American women writers. Included are alphabetically arranged entries on more than 150 novelists, poets, playwrights, short fiction writers, autobiographers, essayists, and influential scholars.
Feminism in Literature: A Gale critical companion
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This six-volume set in the Gale Critical Companion Collection explores the history of women and feminism throughout literature, from classical antiquity to modern times. Topics covered include misogyny and women's social roles in ancient civilizations, 16th-century women's devotional literature, 17th- and 18th-century women's captivity narratives, the women's suffrage movement in 19th-century America, women writers of the "Lost Generation," lesbian literature, modern feminist theory and much more. Also included are detailed studies of prominent women writers. Three indexes - author, title and subject - help researchers find information across the set.
Feminist Novelists
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Provides essays of influential feminist writers including Margaret Atwood, Anais Nin, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf.
Latina Writers
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"Latina Writers is a collection of 11 essays and interviews that examine the craft and themes in the works of several Latina authors of diverse heritages who trace their roots to the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Gloria Anzaldua, the Chicana author and critic, is the subject of several essays, and the book includes interviews with Judith Ortiz Cofer and Esmeralda Santiago. The essays address such themes as feminism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, gender, the border, linguistics, images of food, and perspectives on being queer and Latina."—MultiCultural Review
A Mary Shelley Encyclopedia
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This reference is a comprehensive guide to her life and career. Included are hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries about her works, friends, relatives, residences, fictional characters, allusions, and more.
Notable American Women Writers
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This new title brings together overviews and in-depth analysis of hundreds of American women writers, from Colonial America to present day. This work concentrates on women writers of literature, including novels, short stories, poetry, and drama. Essays include a personal biography and a summary of works, with valuable top matter details and further reading sections. The volumes include reviews and excerpts of the writer's most acclaimed works to give the researcher a unique, comprehensive perspective
The Toni Morrison Encyclopedia
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Intended for lay readers and scholars alike, this reference offers a convenient overview of her life and achievements. The first book of its kind, this reference offers hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries on Morrison's works, major characters, themes, and other topics. Lengthier essays cover each of her novels, along with various approaches to her writings. Each of the entries was written by an expert contributor, and many close with suggestions for further reading. The volume concludes with a selected bibliography of major studies. All told, this book provides a remarkable overview of Morrison's primary concerns and achievements, charting a helpful course for readers who wish to venture deeper into the work of this extraordinary author. Toni Morrison is arguably the most popular and significant contemporary African American author of all time. As a writer, she personifies courage, blending the personal and the political and doing so in a way that resonates for readers of every age, race, ethnicity, and gender. Her stories are imagined in language that is both graceful and powerful--a truly poetic prose. Morrison's works have received increased scholarly attention, and her contributions were formally recognized around the world when she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
Useful Jane Austen
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Concise overview of Jane Austen's life, Jane Austen and the English language, Jane Austen's works; and synopses of Jane Austen's major novels.
Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugent
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Richard Bruce Nugent (1906-1987) was a writer, painter, illustrator, and popular bohemian personality who lived at the center of the Harlem Renaissance. Protégé of Alain Locke, roommate of Wallace Thurman, and friend of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, the precocious Nugent stood for many years as the only African-American writer willing to clearly pronounce his homosexuality in print. His contribution to the landmark publication FIRE!!, "Smoke, Lilies and Jade," was unprecedented in its celebration of same-sex desire. A resident of the notorious "Niggeratti Manor," Nugent also appeared on Broadway in Porgy (the 1927 play) and Run, Little Chillun (1933) Thomas H. Wirth, a close friend of Nugent's during the last years of the artist's life, has assembled a selection of Nugent's most important writings, paintings, and drawings--works mostly unpublished or scattered in rare and obscure publications and collected here for the first time. Wirth has written an introduction providing biographical information about Nugent's life and situating his art in relation to the visual and literary currents which influenced him. A foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr. emphasizes the importance of Nugent for African American history and culture.
Emily Dickinson: A Literary Life
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With special attention to Emily Dickinson's growth into a poet, this literary biographical study charts Dickinson's hard-won brilliance as she worked, largely alone, to become the unique American woman writer of the nineteenth century.
How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir
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From award-winning poet Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives--winner of the Kirkus Prize and the Stonewall Book Award--is a "moving, bracingly honest memoir" (The New York Times Book Review) written at the crossroads of sex, race, and power. One of the best books of the year as selected by The New York Times; The Washington Post; NPR; Time; The New Yorker; O, The Oprah Magazine; Harper's Bazaar; Elle; BuzzFeed; Goodreads; and many more. "People don't just happen," writes Saeed Jones. "We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The 'I' it seems doesn't exist until we are able to say, 'I am no longer yours.'" Haunted and haunting, How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir about a young, black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears. Through a series of vignettes that chart a course across the American landscape, Jones draws readers into his boyhood and adolescence--into tumultuous relationships with his family, into passing flings with lovers, friends, and strangers. Each piece builds into a larger examination of race and queerness, power and vulnerability, love and grief: a portrait of what we all do for one another--and to one another--as we fight to become ourselves. An award-winning poet, Jones has developed a style that's as beautiful as it is powerful--a voice that's by turns a river, a blues, and a nightscape set ablaze. How We Fight for Our Lives is a one-of-a-kind memoir and a book that cements Saeed Jones as an essential writer for our time.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
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Maya Angelou's beloved best-selling debut memoir of growing up black in the 1930's and 1940's.
Sent by their mother to live with their devout grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local "powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age— and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.--Back cover.
The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers
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In 1773, the slave Phillis Wheatley literally wrote her way to freedom. The first person of African descent to publish a book of poems in English, she was emancipated by her owners in recognition of her literary achievement. For a time, Wheatley was the most famous black woman in the West. But Thomas Jefferson, unlike his contemporaries Ben Franklin and George Washington, refused to acknowledge her gifts as a writer -- a repudiation that eventually inspired generations of black writers to build an extraordinary body of literature in their efforts to prove him wrong. In The Trials of Phillis Wheatley, Henry Louis Gates Jr. explores the pivotal roles that Wheatley and Jefferson played in shaping the black literary tradition. Writing with all the lyricism and critical skill that place him at the forefront of American letters, Gates brings to life the characters, debates, and controversy that surrounded Wheatley in her day and ours.
African Women Playwrights
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This anthology consists of nine plays by a diverse group of women from throughout the African continent. The plays focus on a wide range of issues, such as cultural differences, AIDS, female circumcision, women's rights to higher education, racial and skin color identity, prostitution as a form of survival for young girls, and nonconformist women resisting old traditions. In addition to the plays themselves, this collection includes commentaries by the playwrights on their own plays, and editor Kathy A. Perkins provides additional commentary and a bibliography of published and unpublished plays by African women. The playwrights featured are Ama Ata Aidoo, Violet R. Barungi, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nathalie Etoke, Dania Gurira, Andiah Kisia, Sindiwe Magona, Malika Ndlovu (Lueen Conning), Juliana Okoh, and Nikkole Salter.
Classic African American Women's Narratives
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Classic African American Women's Narratives offers teachers, students, and general readers a one-volume collection of the most memorable and important prose written by African American women before 1865. The book reproduces the canon of African American women's fiction and autobiography during the slavery era in U.S. history. Each text in the volume represents a "first." Maria Stewart's Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality (1831) was the first political tract authored by an African American woman. Jarena Lee's Life and Religious Experience (1836) was the first African American woman's spiritual autobiography. The Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850) was the first slave narrative to focus on the experience of a female slave in the United States. Frances E. W. Harper's "The Two Offers" (1859) was the first short story published by an African American woman. Harriet E. Wilson's Our Nig (1859) was the first novel written by an African American woman. Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) was the first autobiography authored by an African American woman. Charlotte Forten's "Life on the Sea Islands" (1864) was the first contribution by an African American woman to a major American literary magazine (the Atlantic Monthly). Complemented with an introduction by William L. Andrews, this is the only one-volume collection to gather the most important works of the first great era of African American women's writing.
Collateral Damage: Women Write about War
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From Homer to Tim O'Brien, war literature remains largely the domain of male writers, and traditional narratives imply that the burdens of war are carried by men. But women and children disproportionately suffer the consequences of conflict: famine, disease, sexual abuse, and emotional trauma caused by loss of loved ones, property, and means of subsistence. Collateral Damage tells the stories of those who struggle on the margins of armed conflict or who attempt to rebuild their lives after a war. Bringing together the writings of female authors from across the world, this collection animates the wartime experiences of women as military mothers, combatants, supporters, war resisters, and victims. Their stories stretch from Rwanda to El Salvador, Romania to Sri Lanka, Chile to Iraq. Spanning fiction, poetry, drama, essay, memoir, and reportage, the selections are contextualized by brief author commentaries. The first collection to embrace so wide a range of contemporary authors from such diverse backgrounds, Collateral Damage seeks to validate and shine a light on the experiences of women by revealing the consequences of war endured by millions whose voices are rarely heard.
Contemporary Plays by African American Women
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African American women have increasingly begun to see their plays performed from regional stages to Broadway. Yet many of these artists still struggle to gain attention. In this volume, Sandra Adell draws from the vital wellspring of works created by African American women in the twenty-first century to present ten plays by both prominent and up-and-coming writers. Taken together, the selections portray how these women engage with history as they delve into--and shake up--issues of gender and class to craft compelling stories of African American life. Gliding from gritty urbanism to rural landscapes, these works expand boundaries and boldly disrupt modes of theatrical representation. Selections: Blue Door, by Tanya Barfield; Levee James, by S. M. Shephard-Massat; Hoodoo Love, by Katori Hall; Carnaval, by Nikkole Salter; Single Black Female, by Lisa B. Thompson; Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine, by Lynn Nottage; BlackTop Sky, by Christina Anderson; Voyeurs de Venus, by Lydia Diamond; Fedra, by J. Nicole Brooks; and Uppa Creek: A Modern Anachronistic Parody in the Minstrel Tradition, by Keli Garrett.
Shattering the stereotypes : Muslim women speak out
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In the wake of September 11th, Muslim women in the West found themselves more marginalized than ever by a panicked discourse that did little to promote a true understanding of Islam or the Islamic world. Here, in this ambitious volume that includes essays, poetry, fiction, memoir, plays, and artwork, Muslim women speak for themselves, revealing a complexity of experience and thought that escapes most Western portrayals. Islam is, as editor Fawzia Afzal-Khan puts it, only "one spoke in the wheel of our lives." In Shattering the Stereotypes, essays by such writers as Ayesha Jalal, the Pakistani-American historian and MacArthur fellow, poems by award-winning poets including Suheir Hammad and Nathalie Handal, Journalism from writers such as Barbara Nimri Aziz, and a selection of short fiction and plays that are not just ethnically but attitudinally diverse, together make a more rounded portrait of what it is to be a Muslim woman in the 21st century.
Growing up Gay - Growing up Lesbian: A Literary Anthology
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Growing up Gay, Growing up Lesbian is the first literary anthology geared specifically to gay and lesbian youth. It includes more than fifty coming-of-age stories by established writers and teenagers and has been hailed by writers, educators, activists, booksellers, and the press as an essential resource for young people--and not-so-young people--seeking to understand the gay and lesbian experience. The anthology includes selections by James Baldwin, Rita Mae Brown, David Leavitt, Jeanette Winterson, Audre Lorde, and others. A free teaching guide is available.
Black Women Writing Autobiography: A tradition within a tradition
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Argues for a redefinition of the genre of black American autobiography to include the images of women as well as their memoirs, reminiscences, diaries, and journals - as a corrective to both black and feminist literary criticism.
The Fornes Frame: Contemporary Latina Playwrights and the Legacy of Maria Irene Fornes
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A key way to view Latina plays today is through the foundational frame of playwright and teacher Maria Irene Fornes, who has trained a generation of theatre artists and transformed the field of American theatre. Fornes, author of Fefu and Her Friends and Sarita and a nine-time Obie Award winner, is known for her plays that traverse cultural, spiritual, and aesthetic borders. In The Fornes Frame: Contemporary Latina Playwrights and the Legacy of Maria Irene Fornes, Anne García-Romero considers the work of five award-winning Latina playwrights in the early twenty-first century, offering her unique perspective as a theatre studies scholar who is also a professional playwright. The playwrights in this book include Pulitzer Prize-winner Quiara Alegría Hudes; Obie Award-winner Caridad Svich; Karen Zacarías, resident playwright at Arena Stage in Washington, DC; Elaine Romero, member of the Goodman Theatre Playwrights Unit in Chicago, Illinois; and Cusi Cram, company member of the LAByrinth Theater Company in New York City. Using four key concepts--cultural multiplicity, supernatural intervention, Latina identity, and theatrical experimentation--García-Romero shows how these playwrights expand past a consideration of a single culture toward broader, simultaneous connections to diverse cultures. The playwrights also experiment with the theatrical form as they redefine what a Latina play can be. Following Fornes's legacy, these playwrights continue to contest and complicate Latina theatre.
Healing Memories: Puerto Rican women's literature in the United States
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Using an interdisciplinary approach, Healing Memories analyzes the ways that Puerto Rican women authors use their literary works to challenge historical methodologies that have silenced the historical experiences of Puerto Rican women in the United States. Following Aurora Levins Morales's alternative historical methodology she calls "curandera history," this work analyzes the literary work of authors, including Aurora Levins Morales, Nicholasa Mohr, Esmeralda Santiago, and Judith Ortiz Cofer, and the ways they create medicinal histories that not only document the experiences of migrant women but also heal the trauma of their erasure from mainstream national history. Each analytical chapter focuses on the various methods used by each author including using the literary space as an archive, reclaiming memory, and (re)writing cultural history, all through a feminist lens that centers the voices and experiences of Puerto Rican women.
LGBTQ Literature
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So much of great literature centres on explorations of gender, sex, and sexuality. What does it mean to be a proper man or woman; what if one cannot be properly called either? Should one wield one's sexual power politically? What is the relation between law, divine or secular, and sexuality? These are just some of the questions that this volume examines through an analysis of a wide range of texts. Each essay is 2,500 to 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of ""Works Cited,"" along with endnotes. Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources.
Margaret Atwood
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A great starting point for students seeking an introduction to Atwood and the critical discussions surrounding her work. As the author of over forty works-including over a dozen novels and over a dozen books of poetry as well as collections of short stories and short fictions, works of literary criticism, and collections of her essays and reviews-Margaret Atwood is indisputably Canada's best-known contemporary author. Her works are taught in colleges and universities all over the world in a variety of courses, including women's literature, contemporary literature, and world and comparative literature. From the beginning of her career, when The Circle Game, won Canada's prestigious Governor General's Award, to the recent publication of The Year of the Flood, Atwood has been thrilling readers with her wit, incisive criticism, and complex characters. Edited by J. Brooks Bouson, Professor of English at Loyola University Chicago, this volume in the Critical Insights series presents a variety of new essays on the Canadian writer. For readers who are studying Atwood for the first time, a biographical sketch relates the details of her life and four essays survey the critical reception of Atwood's work, explore its cultural anistorical contexts, situate Atwood among her contemporaries, and review key themes in her work. Readers seeking a deeper understanding of the writer can then move on to other essays that explore topics like Atwood's feminism and Canadian identity; her use of myth; her on the environment; her reworking of the mystery genre; and the elements of gothicism, spirituality, and trauma that recur throughout her work. Works discussed include Surfacing, The Handmaid's Tale, The Blind Assassin, Alias Grace, Oryx and Crake, and The Year of the Flood as well as selections from her mostly widely read short story and poetry collections. Among the contributors are Coral Ann Howells, Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson, Michael P. Murphy, and Sharon R. Wilson. Rounding out the volume are a chronology of Atwood's life and a list of her principle publications as well as a bibliography for readers seeking to study this iconic author in greater depth.
Our Deep Gossip: Conversations with Gay Writers on Poetry and Desire
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From Walt Whitman forward, a century and a half of radical experimentation and bold speech by gay and lesbian poets has deeply influenced the American poetic voice. In Our Deep Gossip, Christopher Hennessy interviews eight gay men who are celebrated American poets and writers: Edward Field, John Ashbery, Richard Howard, Aaron Shurin, Dennis Cooper, Cyrus Cassells, Wayne Koestenbaum, and Kazim Ali. The interviews showcase the complex ways art and life intertwine, as the poets speak about their early lives, the friends and communities that shaped their work, the histories of gay writers before them, how sex and desire connect with artistic production, what coming out means to a writer, and much more. While the conversations here cover almost every conceivable topic of interest to readers of poetry and poets themselves, the book is an especially important, poignant, far-reaching, and enduring document of what it means to be a gay artist in twentieth- and early twenty-first-century America.
Red-Inked Retablos
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In the Mexican Catholic tradition, retablos are ornamental structures made of carved wood framing an oil painting of a devotional image, usually a patron saint. Acclaimed author and essayist Rigoberto González commemorates the passion and the pain of these carvings in his new volume Red-Inked Retablos, a moving memoir of human experience and thought. This frank new collection masterfully combines accounts from González's personal life with reflections on writers who have influenced him. The collection offers an in-depth meditation on the development of gay Chicano literature and the responsibilities of the Chicana/o writer. Widely acclaimed for giving a voice to the Chicano GLBT community, González's writing spans a wide range of genres: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and bilingual books for children and young adults. Introduced by Women's Studies professor Maythee Rojas, Retablos collects thirteen pieces that together provide a narrative of González's life from his childhood through his career as a writer, critic, and mentor. In Red-Inked Retablos, González continues to expand his oeuvre on mariposa (literally, "butterfly") memory, a genre he pioneered in which Chicano/a writers openly address non-traditional sexuality. For González, mariposa memory is important testimony not only about reconfiguring personal identity in relation to masculinity, culture, and religion. It's also about highlighting values like education, shaping a sex-positive discourse, and exercising agency through a public voice. It's about making the queer experience a Chicano experience and the Chicano experience a queer one.
Shapes of Silence: Writing by Women of Colour and the Politics of Testimony
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Drawing from the insights of subaltern studies and postcolonial feminisms, Proma Tagore brings together the work of a diverse group of writers - Toni Morrison, Shani Mootoo, Louise Erdrich, M.K. Indira, Rashsundari Debi, and Mahasweta Devi. She focuses on the visceral, affective nature of their narratives and explores the way that personal and historical trauma, initially silenced, may be recorded across generations, as well as across complex national, racial, gender, and sexual lines.
So Famous and So Gay : The fabulous potency of Truman Capote and Gertrude Stein
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Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) and Truman Capote (1924-1984) should not have been famous. They made their names between the Oscar Wilde trial and Stonewall, when homosexuality meant criminality and perversion. And yet both Stein and Capote, openly and exclusively gay, built their outsize reputations on works that directly featured homosexuality and a queer aesthetic. How did these writers become mass-market celebrities while other gay public figures were closeted or censored? And what did their fame mean for queer writers and readers, and for the culture in general? Jeff Solomon explores these questions in So Famous and So Gay. Celebrating lesbian partnership, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was published in 1933 and rocketed Stein, the Jewish lesbian intellectual avant-garde American expatriate, to international stardom and a mass-market readership. Fifteen years later, when Capote published Other Voices, Other Rooms, a novel of explicit homosexual sex and love, his fame itself became famous. Through original archival research, Solomon traces the construction and impact of the writers' public personae from a gay-affirmative perspective. He historically situates author photos, celebrity gossip, and other ephemera to explain how Stein and Capote expressed homosexuality and negotiated homophobia through the fleeting depiction of what could not be directly written--maneuvers that other gay writers such as Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, and James Baldwin could not manage at the time. Finally So Famous and So Gay reveals what Capote's and Stein's debuts, Other Voices, Other Rooms and Three Lives, held for queer readers in terms of gay identity and psychology--and for gay authors who wrote in their wake.
Violence Against Indigenous Women: Literature, Activism, Resistance
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Violence against Indigenous women in Canada is an ongoing crisis, with roots deep in the nation's colonial history. Despite numerous policies and programs developed to address the issue, Indigenous women continue to be targeted for violence at disproportionate rates. What insights can literature contribute where dominant anti-violence initiatives have failed? Centring the voices of contemporary Indigenous women writers, this book argues for the important role that literature and storytelling can play in response to gendered colonial violence. Indigenous communities have been organizing against violence since newcomers first arrived, but the cases of missing and murdered women have only recently garnered broad public attention. Violence Against Indigenous Women joins the conversation by analyzing the socially interventionist work of Indigenous women poets, playwrights, filmmakers, and fiction-writers. Organized as a series of case studies that pair literary interventions with recent sites of activism and policy-critique, the book puts literature in dialogue with anti-violence debate to illuminate new pathways toward action. With the advent of provincial and national inquiries into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, a larger public conversation is now underway. Indigenous women's literature is a critical site of knowledge-making and critique. Violence Against Indigenous Women provides a foundation for reading this literature in the context of Indigenous feminist scholarship and activism and the ongoing intellectual history of Indigenous women's resistance.
The Women of Provincetown, 1915-1922
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Black examines the roles a remarkable group of women played in one of the most influential theatre groups in America, demonstrating their influence on 20th-century dramaturgy and culture. In this fascinating work, Cheryl Black argues that, in addition to its role in developing an American tradition of non-commercial theatre, Provincetown has another, largely unacknowledged claim to fame--it was one of the first theatre companies in America in which women achieved prominence in every area of operation. At a time when women playwrights were rare, women directors rarer, and women scenic designers unheard of, Provincetown's female members excelled in all of these roles. In addition to the well-known playwright Susan Gaspell, the company's female membership included the likes of poets Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mina Loy, and Djuna Barnes; journalists Louise Bryant and Mary Heaton Vorce; novelists Neith Boyce and Evelyn Scott; and painter Marguerite Zorach. The Women of Provincetown is an engaging work of social history, offering new insights into the relationship between gender and theatre.