The Oxford Book of Women's Writing in The United States

by Linda Wagner-Martin (Editor)

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.

Genres: Short Stories

608 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Linda Wagner-Martin is the Frank Borden Hanes Professor of English and Comparative Literature Emerita at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Over a teaching career spanning 53 years, she taught at Wayne State University, Michigan State University, and UNC, while authoring and editing more than 55 books. Her work includes biographies of major literary figures such as Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou, along with studies like A History of American Literature from 1950 to the Present and The Routledge Introduction to American Postmodernism. After retiring in 2011, she continued publishing extensively. Wagner-Martin’s contributions have earned her prestigious awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Hubbell Medal for Lifetime Service to American Literature, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Radcliffe Institute. She holds BA, BS, MA, and PhD degrees from Bowling Green State University, where she graduated magna cum laude with majors in English and minors in American History.

Reviews

[Richard Subber · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a trove of writing in many genres: poetry, essays, short stories, plays, speeches, diaries, and more.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say “treasure trove.”
More than 180 authors are represented Women’s Writing, with such luminaries as Eudora Welty, Georgia O’Keeffe, Emily Dickinson, and Mary Boykin Chesnut.
Doubtless you’ll find plenty of prose and poetry that you’ve never seen before. Take a look, you’ll find something you like.
Perhaps, like me, you’ll figure out that a collection of more than 180 authors has to include quite a few who wouldn’t have made the cut if the editors had decided to publish a smaller book.
Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com

[Mills College Library]

810.8 O983w 1999

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you haven't read Cathy Wagner's poetry yet, you're missing out. Period.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent writings by women from all ages.