A sermon preached to the choir, this is not a good starting-point for those unfamiliar with Rich and her views—but it may be...
An uneven collection of occasional pieces by one of America’s foremost poets.
For better or worse, Rich (Midnight Salvage, 1997, etc.) has reached a level of literary acclaim that allows her to publish anything she chooses. This collection spans three decades and consists primarily of papers and interviews given in academic settings. Interestingly enough, the strongest piece (“When We Dead Awaken”) is the oldest; originally presented to an MLA forum in 1971, it explores the consequences of being a female poet in a “white, patriarchal society.” As she puts it, “Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves.” In discussing Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, Rich senses a deep frustration: “It is the tone of a woman determined not to appear angry, who is willing herself to be calm, detached, and even charming in a roomful of men where things have been said which are attacks on her very integrity.” If there is one thing that Rich has abandoned, it’s a desire to please “the patriarchal hierarchy,” and (in her best pre-1989 idiom) she speaks throughout of the “damage” wrought by the advancement of “North American capitalism.” As the collection progresses, the focus shifts from the plight of women generally to the exploitation of the “powerless” throughout history (predominantly represented here, with no apparent irony, by the Sandinistas). Rich calls for the return of a poetry that is politically engaged: “I have deplored the retreat into the personal as a current fetish of mass-market culture.” If, at the dawn of the 21st century, it is easy to scoff at such sentiments, it must be admitted that there is a touching (and very American) optimism here all the same.
A sermon preached to the choir, this is not a good starting-point for those unfamiliar with Rich and her views—but it may be of some interest to those already attuned to her work.Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-393-05045-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
A European woman who assumed the persona of a young male Tunisian student describes her remarkable journey into the Sahara in colorful and textured, albeit romanticized, vignettes. In 1897, Isabelle Eberhardt (The Oblivion Seekers, not reviewed), born and raised in Geneva, traveled with her mother to Tunis, where both converted to Islam. Eberhardt spent much of the rest of her life in Algeria; this work comes from notes she made during 1904 as they were later edited and published in France by Victor Barrucand. Despite this cleanup of the notes, some intriguing internal tensions remain: Eberhardt says her male persona (which Arabs respected, even when they saw through it) allows her to travel without attracting notice, but in a low moment she notes that she attracts disapproval. Near the Algeria-Morocco border, she muses with some pleasure that nobody knows precisely where the boundary is, yet soon (in one of the few hints at the region's volatility) she trades her Moroccan attire for Algerian to avoid annoying residents. When individuals and settings attract her eye she describes them vividly and concisely, whether she is passing a madman reciting verses from the Koran or taking tea with male students at a mosque. (Her garb ironically restricts her access to—and ability to learn about—women; interestingly, she seems not to mind.) Her observations on the play of light and color over the desert are made with an artist's eye, and her musings on travel and isolation reveal a pensive side. Yet far as she journeys, literally and metaphorically, she is still dogged by her prejudices: Jewish women cast ``provocative leers,'' and Jewish men possess ``insinuating and commercial abilities''; blacks can be ``repulsive'' and, when dancing, both ``childlike'' and ``barbarous.'' Though lacking a needed glossary for the many Arabic terms used, this slim volume makes a welcome addition to the information available on an extraordinary woman.
Pub Date: Oct. 5, 1994
ISBN: 0-7206-0889-9
Page Count: 120
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
The final third of this feminist literary study maintains the quality of volumes I (The War of the Words, 1987) and II (Sexchanges, 1989) as it looks at women writers' exploration of our century's complex and ever-shifting cultural scene, particularly the thorny question of gender. Gilbert and Gubar take a generally chronological approach, beginning with the modernists. In their analysis, Virginia Woolf sketched scenarios challenging traditional sex roles, as well as the historical settings and the social hierarchies in which they functioned. Edna St. Vincent Millay and Marianne Moore were ``female female impersonators'' who exploited femininity's artificiality in an imaginative but uncertainly empowering way. The authors then move on to the Harlem Renaissance, arguing that such writers as Nora Zeale Hurston, Jessie Redmon Faucet, and Nella Larsen worked to reveal the ``authentic (black) feminine'' behind racial stereotypes and criticized (white) feminism. Intertwining the poet and her work, a chapter on HD maintains that she produced her long poems by consciously manipulating images of herself. Moving forward to WW II, Gilbert and Gubar discuss the period's ``blitz on women'': Cheesecake pinups on tanks and VD posters conflated sex and death, while even positive images of the women left behind were tinged with resentment. They contend that metaphors from the war, transformed into images of sexual battle, haunted the poems of Sylvia Plath, who fought toward a way of being a woman beyond the old patriarchal traditions. At once playful and thoughtful, the final chapter considers the multiplicity of women's stories via the authors' several rewrites of Snow White—e.g., the no-longer-evil queen challenges gender roles by advising Snow White to ``marry the Prince but sleep with me too,'' while in another version a critically savvy queen realizes they're all ``merely signifiers, signifying nothing.'' A satisfying conclusion to an ambitious project.
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1994
ISBN: 0-300-05631-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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