Private Voices, Public Lives: Women Speak on the Literary LifeNancy Owen Nelson Interweaving the personal, private voice with scholarly, public intent, Nelson and the other contributors argue for a more interactive and cooperative approach to the teaching, reading, critiquing, and writing of literature. These essays are a direct result of the desire by many women within the academic community to break free of what has been called the “masculine” or “adversary” mode of literary criticism. Private Voices, Public Lives is of critical importance to readers, teachers, reviewers, and critics. The essays incorporate ideas on current issues of autobiography, memoir, women's voice, reader response, diversity, life writing, and gender. |
Contents
3 | |
11 | |
19 | |
29 | |
NANCY DREWTHE PERFECT SOLUTION | 41 |
WRESTLING WITH THE MOTHER AND THE FATHER HIS AND HER IN ADRIENNE RICH | 54 |
IN SEARCH OF THE ANDROGYNOUS SELF | 64 |
FROM ROBOT TO ROARER | 72 |
SPEAKING ACROSS BOUNDARIES AND SHARING THE LOSS OF A CHILD | 163 |
TRAILING WEST | 183 |
A SPIRITUAL GEOGRAPHY REVISITED | 194 |
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY | 209 |
BREAKING PATTERNS FINDING VOICES | 225 |
SEARCH AND RESCUE | 238 |
DIVERSITY AND THE AMERICAN DREAM | 250 |
WOMENS LITERATURE AS INDIVIDUATION FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS | 261 |
A WHITE BIRD FLYING STRAIGHT DOWN | 86 |
MY LIFE AS A LESBIAN TEACHER | 99 |
IN AROUND AND ABOUT AMY TANS THE JOY LUCK CLUB | 111 |
A PERSONAL LOG | 125 |
MUTATIONS OF A HUNGARIAN CONTINENTAL DRIFTER INTO AN AMERICAN WOMAN | 141 |
TRAPPEDTHEN RELEASEDBY A GIFT FROM THE SEA | 153 |
FINDING MY VOICE CAUGHT BETWEEN A WOOLF AND A CRANE | 270 |
VIRGINIA WOOLF AND THE COMMON READER | 283 |
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES | 299 |
INDEX TO AUTHORS CHARACTERS SUBJECTS | 311 |
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academic Adrienne Rich American androgynous Anne Ántonia Atherton Austin authority baby became become began biographers boat child colleagues creative culture Dakota daughter dream English essay experience explore father feel felt female feminist fiction Frederick Manfred friends gender girl graduate grandmother Hart Crane helped homophobia human husband Joy Luck Club Kate Chopin Katherine Anne Porter knew land language Laura Ingalls Laura Ingalls Wilder learned lesbian Lindbergh literary criticism Little House books lives look male Mary masculinist criticism Maya Angelou mother Nancy Drew narrative Nebraska never Norris novel one's pain parents poem poet poetry readers reading relationship role Rowlandson seems shell silence speak Spock stories summer Sunday Morning Apples talk teacher teaching tell things thought tion Virginia Woolf voice wanted western Wilder Willa Cather woman women writers women's literature words writing wrote York
Popular passages
Page 91 - See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me : I kill, and I make alive ; I wound and I heal ; neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.
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Page 68 - O why did God, Creator wise, that peopl'd highest Heav'n With Spirits Masculine, create at last This novelty on Earth, this fair defect Of Nature, and not fill the World at once 308 With Men as Angels without Feminine, Or find some other way to generate Mankind...
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Page 97 - I stepped from plank to plank A slow and cautious way, The stars about my head I felt, About my feet the sea. I knew not but the next Would be my final inch — This gave me that precarious gait Some call experience.
Page 97 - The Props assist the House Until the House is built And then the Props withdraw And adequate, erect, The House support itself And cease to recollect The augur and the Carpenter — Just such a retrospect Hath the perfected Life — A past of Plank and Nail And slowness — then the Scaffolds drop Affirming it a Soul. Here she seems to be saying not just that she is getting along fine without faith — the "Props...
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