| Description |
x, 596 pages ; 23 cm |
| Note |
Includes index. |
| Bibliography |
Includes index. |
| Summary |
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, 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, 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. |
| Contents |
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 -- To my dear and loving husband ; The flesh and the spirit / Anne Bradstreet -- On imagination / Phillis Wheatley -- The soul selects her own society ; This is my letter to the world ; My life had stood--a loaded gun ; After great pain, a formal feeling comes / Emily Dickinson -- Decade / Amy Lowell -- The poem as mask / Muriel Rukeyser -- Lineage / Margaret Walker -- Religion, from Ulysses / Gwendolyn Brooks -- In an iridescent time / Ruth Stone -- Woman me / Maya Angelou -- Lady Lazarus / Sylvia Plath -- Diving into the wreck / Adrienne Rich -- When I was growing up / Nellie Wong -- The thirty eighth year / Lucille Clifton -- Song for a thin sister / Audre Lorde -- What the gypsy said to her children / Judith Ortiz Cofer -- Daystar / Rita Dove -- A history of costume / Michelle Cliff -- Suicide note / Janice Mirikitani -- Remember / Joy Harjo -- As children together / Carolyn Forche -- from On the equality of the sexes / Judith Sargent Murray -- A woman at forty, from Woman in the nineteenth century / Margaret Fuller -- The working-girls of New York, from Folly as it flies / Fanny Fern -- The case stated / Ida B. Wells-Barnett -- from The higher education of women / Anna Julia Haywood Cooper -- The coyote-spirit and the weaving woman / Mary Hunter Austin -- Women are hungry / Meridel Le Sueur -- More than just a shrine: paying homage to the ghosts of Ellis Island / Mary Gordon -- Longing to die of old age / Alice Walker -- Last words on Vietnam, 1987 / Martha Gellhorn -- Amazons in Appalachia / Marilou Awiakta -- If men could menstruate / Gloria Steinem -- Why I want a wife / Judy Syfers -- The good guys / Anna Quindlen -- 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 -- To John Adams / Abigail Adams -- Letter to the editors of Freedom's Journal / Matilda -- Letter XV: man equally guilty with woman in the fall / Sarah Moore Grimke -- Diary / Louisa May Alcott -- Afternoon in the woods, from Rural hours / Susan Fenimore Cooper -- The trials of girlhood, from Incidents in the life of a slave girl / Harriet Ann Jacobs -- To John Brown / Frances Ellen Watkins Harper -- To Louisa Picquet / Elizabeth Ramsey -- Diary / Mary Boykin Chesnut -- To Liane De Pougy / Natalie Barney -- To Ben Reitman / Emma Goldman -- from The school days of an Indian girl / Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Bonnin) -- from, Leaves from the mental portfolio of an Eurasian / Sui Sin Far -- One farmer's wife / Anonymous -- To Anita Pollitzer / Georgia O'Keeffe -- Names, from Memories of a Catholic girlhood / Mary McCarthy -- from Storyteller / Leslie Marmon Silko -- To Gabriela, a young writer / Pat Mora -- The last return from the sea, from The captain's lady's cookbook -- Bass for Picasso, from The Alice B. Toklas cook book / Alice B. Toklas -- Sunday revival dinner, from The taste of country cooking / Edna Lewis -- Los dias de los muertos, from Food from my heart / Zarela Martinez -- Wild nights--wild nights! ; Come slowly--Eden! ; Volcanoes be in Sicily / Emily Dickinson -- The storm, A sequel to "The 'Cadian ball" / Kate Chopin -- from, Lifting belly / Gertrude Stein -- I want to die while you love me / Georgia Douglas Johnson -- Sea rose / H.D. -- Mandra, II, from Little birds / Anais Nin -- Sappho's reply / Rita May Brown -- She didn't think we were married / Olga Broumas and Jane Miller -- Fifteen, from Autumn sequence / Jan Freeman |
| Subject |
American literature -- Women authors.
|
|
Women -- United States -- Literary collections.
|
| Indexed Term |
English literature By Women |
|
United States |
| Added Author |
Wagner-Martin, Linda.
|
|
Davidson, Cathy N., 1949-
|
| Added Title |
Women's writing in the United States |
| ISBN |
0195087062 alkaline paper |
|
9780195087062 alkaline paper |
|
