The Beacon Book of Essays by Contemporary American Women PDF Download

Author: Wendy Martin
Publisher: Beacon Press (MA)
ISBN:
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Two generations ago, most essayists were men, but in recent decades, women writers have claimed the personal essay, using its freedom to explore contemporary life in all its diversity. Wendy Martin has gathered a wide range of writing, from classics by Maya Angelou and Joan Didion to new voices of younger writers, many appearing here for the first time in book form.

Author: Barbara J. Love
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 025203189X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
Documents the key feminists who ignited the second wave women's movement. This work tells the stories of more than two thousand individual women and a few notable men who together reignited the women's movement and made permanent changes to entrenched customs and laws.

Author: Vivian Gornick
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 080707036X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This collection of brave personal essays finds a quintessentially contemporary woman (urban, single, feminist) trying to observe herself and the world without sentiment, cynicism, or nostalgia. Whether walking along the streets of New York or teaching writing at a university, she is a woman exploring her need for conversation and connection—with men and women, colleagues and strangers. She recalls her stint as a waitress in the Catskills and a failed friendship with an older woman and mentor; she reconsiders her experiences in the feminist movement, while living alone, and in marriage. Turning her sharp eye on herself, Gornick struggles to see her part in things—how she has both welcomed and avoided contact, and how these attempts at connections have enlivened and, at times, defeated her. Unrelentingly honest, her essays remind us that we can come to know ourselves only by engaging fully with the world.

Author: Sarah Knott
Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books
ISBN: 0374213585
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Welcome to a work of history unlike any other. Mothering is as old as human existence. But how has this most essential experience changed over time and cultures? What is the history of maternity—the history of pregnancy, birth, the encounter with an infant? Can one capture the historical trail of mothers? How? In Mother Is a Verb, the historian Sarah Knott creates a genre all her own in order to craft a new kind of historical interpretation. Blending memoir and history and building from anecdote, her book brings the past and the present viscerally alive. It is at once intimate and expansive, lyrical and precise. As a history, Mother Is a Verb draws on the terrain of Britain and North America from the seventeenth century to the close of the twentieth. Knott searches among a range of past societies, from those of Cree and Ojibwe women to tenant farmers in Appalachia; from enslaved people on South Carolina rice plantations to tenement dwellers in New York City and London’s East End. She pores over diaries, letters, court records, medical manuals, items of clothing. And she explores and documents her own experiences. As a memoir, Mother Is a Verb becomes a method of asking new questions and probing lost pasts in order to historicize the smallest, even the most mundane of human experiences. Is there a history to interruption, to the sound of an infant’s cry, to sleeplessness? Knott finds answers not through the telling of grand narratives, but through the painstaking accumulation of a trellis of anecdotes. And all the while, we can feel the child on her hip.

Author: Alfred Bendixen
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118917480
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 708

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Book Description
Featuring 37 essays by distinguished literary scholars, A Companion to the American Novel provides a comprehensive single-volume treatment of the development of the novel in the United States from the late 18th century to the present day. Represents the most comprehensive single-volume introduction to this popular literary form currently available Features 37 contributions from a wide range of distinguished literary scholars Includes essays on topics and genres, historical overviews, and key individual works, including The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, Beloved, and many more.

Author: B. J. Hollars
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496210123
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
Contemporary discussions on nonfiction are often riddled with questions about the boundaries between truth and memory, honesty and artifice, facts and lies. Just how much truth is in nonfiction? How much is a lie? Blurring the Boundaries sets out to answer such questions while simultaneously exploring the limits of the form. This collection features twenty genre-bending essays from today's most renowned teachers and writers--including original work from Michael Martone, Marcia Aldrich, Dinty W. Moore, Lia Purpura, and Robin Hemley, among others. These essays experiment with structure, style, and subject matter, and each is accompanied by the writer's personal reflection on the work itself, illuminating his or her struggles along the way. As these innovative writers stretch the limits of genre, they take us with them, offering readers a front-row seat to an ever-evolving form. Readers also receive a practical approach to craft thanks to the unique writing exercises provided by the writers themselves. Part groundbreaking nonfiction collection, part writing reference, Blurring the Boundaries serves as the ideal book for literary lovers and practitioners of the craft.

Author: Alfred Bendixen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316123308
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1442

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Book Description
The Cambridge History of American Poetry offers a comprehensive exploration of the development of American poetic traditions from their beginnings until the end of the twentieth century. Bringing together the insights of fifty distinguished scholars, this literary history emphasizes the complex roles that poetry has played in American cultural and intellectual life, detailing the variety of ways in which both public and private forms of poetry have met the needs of different communities at different times. The Cambridge History of American Poetry recognizes the existence of multiple traditions and a dramatically fluid canon, providing current perspectives on both major authors and a number of representative figures whose work embodies the diversity of America's democratic traditions.

Author: Wendy Martin Ph.D.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440803323
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1077

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Book Description
An exciting new reference work that illuminates the beliefs, customs, events, material culture, and institutions that made up Emily Dickinson's world, giving users a glance at both Dickinson's life and times and the social history of America in the 19th century. While Emily Dickinson is one of the most widely studied American poets, some dimensions of her life and work are largely under-appreciated. This book provides the wider context necessary for a more complete understanding of Dickinson, presenting Dickinson's life and times as well as discussion of her poetry and letters. Prolific author and Dickinson expert Wendy Martin and 59 contributors address the relationship between Emily Dickinson's life and work and the larger world in which she lived. Examination of topics such as the history of Amherst, MA, and the Dickinson family's place in it; and the cultural, financial, political, legal, and religious practices of the day illuminate important dimensions of Dickinson's experiences and world for students, scholars, and general readers of this iconic poet's work.

Author: David King Dunaway
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 9780826323378
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
The accompanying CD provides excerpts from the interviews with the authors.

Author: Evelyn C. White
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393058918
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
Drawing on papers, letters, journals, and extensive interviews with Walker, her family, friends, and colleagues, and with leading American cultural figures including Gloria Steinem, Quincy Jones, and Oprah Winfrey, White assesses one of the most influential writers of modern time.