Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"
The Intimate Critique marks the coming out of a new critical genre, sure to generate controversy, pleasure, rage, support, disbelief, acclaim (i.e., strong reactions!) among its readers."—Alice Kaplan, author of
French Lessons: A Memoir"Grouped together, these very different essays raise and respond to a question that feminist theorists continue to ask—about the extent to which individual experience and self-expression may be read as representative."—Rachel M. Brownstein, author of
Becoming a Heroine: Reading About Women in Novels"This book goes a long way toward breathing life into literary criticism, advancing the necessary effort to write about it in a personal, engaged, and interesting manner."—G. Douglas Atkins, University of Kansas
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction / Diane P. Freedman, Olivia Frey, and Francis Murphy Zauhar 1
Part 1. Muse-ings on Genre, Autobiography, Narrative: Formative Strategies
Border Crossing as Method and Motif in Contemporary American Writing, or, How Freud Helped Me Case the Joint / Diane P. Freedman 13
Me and My Shadow / Jane Tompkins 23
Beyond Literary Darwinism: Women's Voices and Critical Discourse / Olivia Frey 41
"Everyday Life": My Sojourn at Parchman Farm / Cheryl B. Torsney 67
Excerpts from Letters to Friends / Susan Koppelman 75
Social Circles: Being a Report on J. Hills Miller's Campus Visitation / Linda R. Robertson 81
Touchstones and Bedrocks: Learning the Stories We Need / Victoria Ekanger 93
Part II. Critical Confessions
Creative Voices: Women Reading and Women's Writing / Frances Murphy Zauhar 103
Breaking Silence:
The Woman Warrior / Shirley Nelson Garner 117
Different Silences / Traise Yamamoto 127
"What's in a Name?": Some Meanings of Blackness / Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 135
Poetry and the Age: "A Girl in a Library" to Randall Jarrell / Sandra M. Brown 151
My Friend, Joyce Carol Oates / Brenda Daly 163
Somebody Must Say These Things: An Essay for My Mother / Melody Graulich 175
The Scarlet Brewer and the Voice of the Colonized / Shirley Geok-lin Lim 191
Dividing Fences / Carol S. Taylor 197
What Do Women
Really Mean? Thoughts on Women's Diaries and Lives / Suzanne Bunkers 207
Part III. Autobiographical Literary Criticism
Between the Medusa and the Abyss: Reading
Jane Eyre, Reading Myself / Ellen Brown 225
Rereading
Middlemarch, Rereading Myself / Peter Carlton 237
The Crippling of the Third World: Shiva Naipaul's Heritage / Rosanne Kanhai-Brunton 225
Penelope's Web / Gail Griffin 255
"Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around!": Reading the
Narrative of Frederick Douglass / Dolan Hubbard 265
Catharine Trotter Cockburn and Me: A Duography / Kendall 273
In Between Abject and Object: The Mourning Sickness of the Expectant Mother, or, Three Movements of the Blues in B Minor / Dana Beckelman 283
La Ronde of Children and Mothers / Julia Balen 293
Selected Bibliography 303
Contributors 309
