Louisiana Women Writers

Book excerpt: "This invaluable volume, consisting of eleven critical and biographical essays and an extensive bibliography, represents a rich source of insight and information on Louisiana women writers past and present. The book focuses on an array of authors - from Grace King and Alice Dunbar-Nelson to Shirley Ann Grau and Ellen Gilchrist - associated with a state whose imaginative appeal is singular even in a region rife with mythologies." "The essays are linked by a common thread: the interaction of gender and place as a dynamic of significant critical interest. In the Introduction, Barbara C. Ewell details the fundamental issues, noting that writing about Louisiana, and writing as a Louisiana woman, involves writing about life at the margins - on the borderlines where dominant and muted cultures, role definition and identity, race and class, place and places impinge. She argues that the peculiar otherness of that experience, imposed onto the more familiar layers of southern myth, gender roles, and racial prejudice, distinguishes the contributions of this group of writers to the place that Louisiana occupies in the American psyche." "Rather than attempting to confirm a canon, these essays emphasize the diversity of Louisiana women writers. The critical approaches vary from specialized or speculative comments (such as the essays on Sarah Morgan Dawson and on Kate Chopin's "Desiree's Baby") to introductory or biographical treatments (such as those on Mollie Moore Davis and Berthe Amoss). Other writers considered in the volume include Sidonie de la Houssaye, Ada Jack Carver, Katherine Anne Porter, Sheila Bosworth, and Nancy Lemann." "The Bibliography provides an indispensable new tool for researchers and a fascinating guide for anyone interested in the rich legacy of Louisiana's women writers. It is the first major survey of Louisiana women writers in more than fifty years. Although chiefly limited to imaginative writing in English, it includes entries on some two hundred authors, making it the most complete available. The entries supply names and pen names, dates of birth and death, birthplaces and other biographical information, lists of works with available publication data, and lists of secondary sources." "Intended for both scholarly and casual readers, Louisiana Women Writers will stimulate renewed interest in a rich and vigorous body of literature."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved