Through Other Eyes: Animal Stories by Women

by Doris Lessing, Ursula K. Le Guin, Alice Walker

Am I blue? / Alice Walker --
He was a good lion / Beryl Markham --
Henderson / Meredith Rose --
Homer-snake / Lou V. Crabtree --
Who has lived from a child with chickens / Janet Kauffman --
One whale, singing / Keri Hulme --
Day after day, like a terrible fish / Diane McPherson --
In praise of creeping things / Cathy Cockrell --
Roxie raccoon / Sally Miller Gearhart --
An old woman and her cat / Doris Lessing --
The muskrat / Annie Dillard --
Telepathic rein / Lou Robinson --
A white heron / Sarah Orne Jewett --
The bear / Yvonne Pepin --
"I've finally been accepted by a gorilla" / Dian Fossey. The donkey / May Sarton --
Imprints / Martha Waters --
"The author of the Acacia seeds" and other extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguists / Ursula K. LeGuin

188 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1988

About the author

Doris Lessing was born into a colonial family. both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer), Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual.

In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and later had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.

During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.

In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.

In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.

She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

(Extracted from the pamphlet: A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook & Under My Skin, HarperPerennial, 1995. Full text available on www.dorislessing.org).

Reviews

[S.E. Reid · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel I have to give my quick thoughts here, because I honestly don't know why this collection is so low-rated. It probably suffers from the same issues that most anthologies do; not every story is the right style/tone for every reader, and you may only like a handful (or even one or two) of the tales. The cover doesn't help; it makes this book look like a more fantasy/speculative collection, and the inclusion of Ursula K LeGuin also gives that impression.

But here's the deal: this collection contains stories, mostly scraps of memoir, about women and their relationships to animals in their lives, both wild and tame. And a LOT of the stories have sadness or tragedy at their heart, or make parallels between the state of our world and a woman's sensitivity to it.

I actually very much enjoyed this collection, not because it "made me happy" but because it made me think. My personal favorite story was the one about Homer-Snake, not sure why. I also found the one about the Bear truly moving. Roxie Racoon had a certain verve to it that I enjoyed, too.

My advice: pick this collection up with the right mentality. It's not fantasy, it's not always mystical (despite a few more unusual stories). It's a blood-and-guts exploration of a woman's place in society through our varying relationships with nature. Not always pretty, but honest.

[Rznagle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my all-time favorite books. In general I don't like short story collections because each story is like a friendship that ends just as soon as it gets started, but this compendium is an exception. All these stories -- and it's quite an eclectic lot -- are heartfelt, beautifully written, often poignant, always thoughtful. I read it cover-to-cover when it was first published and have dipped into over and over again since.

[Pat · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horrible book. A collection of stories by authors I know, stories I did not want to know. The only redeeming part of this book was that they included Sarah Orne Jewett's "A White Heron".