A Very Good Question
Hurray! I've been doing nothing--and I mean nothing--but revising since I last posted, but I'm finally done! Woohoo! (Well, for the moment, at any rate--my best reader is going to read the manuscript and give feedback this week, and then it's back to the grindstone.) After revising, the book weighed in at 395 pages, and I know size doesn't matter, but still, it's so massive that I can't help grinning. This is the kind of page count you can generate when you deliberately choose to have no life . . . :)
So, back to real life. I got the most interesting question from a wonderful student at Pine Manor College's MFA program, where I moonlight, and I have some random thoughts in response, but I thought I'd throw it open to your collective wisdom and see what all of us can generate for her.
For a class I'm teaching at this summer's residency at Pine Manor, I've asked students to read in advance Hélène Cixous's famous essay "The Laugh of the Medusa."
My dutiful and smart student, who's already read the essay, writes:
On the negative side of the writing-from-the-body equation, and perhaps not what Cixous was calling for, there's Susanna Moore's novel In the Cut, Kathryn Harrison's memoir The Kiss, and, in other un-cheer, Alice Sebold's excellent memoir Lucky.
For pre-1975/76 publications that Cixous probably wouldn't have known about, I'm thinking of Meridel Le Sueur's classic short story "Annunciation" and H.D.'s creative manifesto "Notes on Thought and Vision," both of which have a positive vision, together with much of the work by Jean Rhys, which doesn't.
But all of these selections are debatable, and I welcome your feedback and alternatives.
And what books by women aren't in that category? Hmm. Where to start?
So, back to real life. I got the most interesting question from a wonderful student at Pine Manor College's MFA program, where I moonlight, and I have some random thoughts in response, but I thought I'd throw it open to your collective wisdom and see what all of us can generate for her.
For a class I'm teaching at this summer's residency at Pine Manor, I've asked students to read in advance Hélène Cixous's famous essay "The Laugh of the Medusa."
My dutiful and smart student, who's already read the essay, writes:
I am just wondering if you have any reading suggestions for what you'd consider "writing from the body" (especially) or "feminine literature" (since time has passed since 1976) and contrasting books/writing by women that you would not consider in that category.Suggestions? Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of--post 1976--Louise Erdrich's memoir The Blue Jay's Dance and novel Love Medicine, Jeanette Winterson, Margaret Atwood's Surfacing (whoops--1972 pub date), fiction and poetry by Sandra Cisneros, and Lauren Slater's Lying. And to me, Toni Morrison's work, starting with The Bluest Eye seems very much written from the body.
On the negative side of the writing-from-the-body equation, and perhaps not what Cixous was calling for, there's Susanna Moore's novel In the Cut, Kathryn Harrison's memoir The Kiss, and, in other un-cheer, Alice Sebold's excellent memoir Lucky.
For pre-1975/76 publications that Cixous probably wouldn't have known about, I'm thinking of Meridel Le Sueur's classic short story "Annunciation" and H.D.'s creative manifesto "Notes on Thought and Vision," both of which have a positive vision, together with much of the work by Jean Rhys, which doesn't.
But all of these selections are debatable, and I welcome your feedback and alternatives.
And what books by women aren't in that category? Hmm. Where to start?
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