Writing out of Place: Regionalism, Women, and American Literary Culture

by Judith Fetterley, Marjorie Pryse

"In a series of sketches, regionalist writers such as Alice Cary, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Sarah Orne Jewett, Grace King, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Sui Sin Far, and Mary Austin critique the approach to regional subjects characteristic of local color and create a countertradition of American writing that locates authority in narrators who serve as cultural interpreters for persons often considered "out of place" by urban readers." Reclaiming the ground of "close" readings for texts that have been insufficiently read, Writing Out of Place presents regionalism as a model for narrative connection between texts and readers within the larger questions that occupy feminist theory and American literary culture. Arguing the need for other models for human development than those produced in heroic stories about men and boys, Fetterley and Pryse offer regionalism as a source of unconventional and counterhegemonic fictions that deserve to be passed on to the next generation of readers.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism

480 pages, Hardcover

First published December 17, 2002

Reviews

[Mills College Library]

810.99287 F421 2003