| Call Number | Author, Title, Description |
| B Adams Family, v.1&2 |
ABIGAIL ADAMS. Adams Family Correspondence - Adam’s Family Born in MA, married to president John Adams; it was her own interests in
"women’s concerns" that led to her famous call for her husband to "remember
the ladies" when the laws of our new nation were being formed. |
| 361.92 ADD |
JANE ADDAMS. Twenty Years at Hull House - Detailing the cultural, political, and educational activities at Hull House, this is a
classic of reform literature. |
| J FIC |
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT. Little Women - Because her family needed money, Louisa reluctantly wrote a story for
girls. "We really lived most of it," she said; "if it succeeds,that will be
the reason." And so, her alter ego Jo, never out of print, rebelling against girlhood’s restraints, still engages her readers. |
| FIC |
ISABEL ALLENDE. The House of the Spirits - This experienced journalist left Chile when her uncle, President Allende, was assassinated. Using real events as background for her novel, she wrote about
a patrician family in an unnamed country, splintered by opposing political and social forces. |
| FIC |
JULIA ALVAREZ. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents - Much of Alvarez’ fiction can be viewed as semi-autobiographical, dealing both
with the immigrant experience and bi-cultural identity. In How the Garcia Girls
Lost Their Accents, the fifteen interrelated stories portray the experiences of
four sisters and their family both before and after their exile from the Dominican
Republic, and their subsequent lives in New York City. |
| B Angelou |
MAYA ANGELOU. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Painful memories in her autobiographical novel softened by the tribute
to her grandmother who gave her security and banished her self-doubts.
She dedicates the book to her son and "to all the strong black birds of
promise who [like herself] defy the odds and the gods." |
| 612.62 ANG |
NATALIE ANGIER. Woman: An Intimate Geography - Angier is a science writer and journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize for
journalism in 1991. In Woman she investigates female biology from the
ovum to the psyche, relating ideas not only to science, but also to the arts
and humanities. |
| 301 A68 |
HANNAH ARENDT. The Human Condition - Her book grew out of lectures said to combine "tremendous intellect
with common sense." She separates human activity into labor,
necessary consumption; work, creating durable objects; and-the most important-classic Greek polis, or action, what we do for the common good. |
| FIC |
MARGARET ATWOOD. The Handmaid’s Tale - Canada’s most
important contemporary writer; Atwood articulates the various
experiences of women and girls in powerfully moving ways that function
also as ascerbic and telling social criticism. In The Handmaid’s Tale, the
world is controlled by fundamentalist Christians in which few women can
bear children and those who can are forced to do so for the rulers. |
| FIC |
JANE AUSTEN. Pride and Prejudice - She changed the rules for writing fiction; let the dialogue carry the plot;
and, with detached irony, pointed out the folly of trusting first impressions
in choosing a mate--the only choice a girl of her time could make for herself. |
| 305.4 B38 |
SIMONE de BEAUVOIR. The Second Sex - Global examination of historical and contemporary records supports her
premise that women were forced by tradition into making choices from a
secondary or inferior position in relation to men. Neither petulant nor
emotional, this logical treatise postulates that pervasive injustice vitiates
relationships between the sexes. |
| 306.1 B46 |
RUTH BENEDICT. Patterns of Culture - Her benchmark book on the nature of Man compared primitive societies: Kwatutls are competitive; Dobus, hostile; Zunis, peaceful, traits found also
in advanced cultures. She concludes that values are relative, not absolute. |
| 613.4244 |
BOSTON WOMEN’S HEALTH COLLECTIVE STAFF. Our Bodies, Ourselves - Carefully searching medical and popular literature, 12 young staff
members gathered facts on women’s physiology and psychology.
Their footnotes and bibliography are worthy of a Ph.D. thesis; their
digressions are as frank as Masters and Johnson and as supportive as
Planned Parenthood. |
| FIC |
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. Jane Eyre - Saying "A heroine can be interesting without being beautiful," she made
Jane small and plain like herself. Then, shockingly, Jane diverged from
her creator’s realism and in wild melodrama began to love Rochester
instead of merely being loved! |
| FIC |
ANITA BROOKNER. Hotel du Lac - Winner of the Booker Prize in 1984, Brookner’s fiction is erudite and full
of allusions. Her novels generally concentrate on intelligent but isolated
female characters who are disappointed in love but who find solace in the
writings of Balzac. |
| FIC |
EMILY BRONTE. Wuthering Heights - Knowing little about the ways of the world and fed by Gothic
romance, she created as hero a vindictive villain of the moors and a
passion reaching beyond the grave into the next generation. A
superlative account of the battle between good and evil. |
| 364.153 B88 |
SUSAN BROWNMILLER. Against Our Will - In her psychosocial history she explores the concept of woman as
property--the warrior rapist and ostracized victims from biblical times
to Vietnam, decrying pornography and prostitution. Her main thrust is
to strengthen legal and judicial systems and teach women to fight
effectively. |
| FIC |
PEARL BUCK. The Good Earth - Child of missionaries, "mentally bifocal," she was more than qualified
to interpret Chinese peasant life, hitherto unknown to Western readers.
With biblical simplicity, she chronicled the hardships and joys of Wang
Lung and O-Lan, devoted to their children and the land. |
| FIC |
H.S. BYATT. Possession: A Romance - British novelist and scholar, Byatt is recognized equally as a scholar and
novelist. Winner of the 1990 Booker Prize, Possesion is about literary
scholarship, modern romance and the lack of it; a novel of many voices. |
| 632 C32 |
RACHEL CARSON. Silent Spring - Warning that the balance of nature is affected by fall-out, pesticides,
weedkillers, and industrial waste, she was the first to foretell the possible
loss of beauty in the world. Her view of songbirds silenced and nature
decimated became the most credible and eloquent defense of our natural
heritage. |
| FIC |
ANGELA CARTER. The Bloody Chamber - Before it was trendy to adapt fairy tale themes into adult fiction, Angela
Carter created these dark, sensual, fantastic short stories. |
| FIC |
WILLA CATHER. My Antonia - Prairie fiction brought fame from Antonia’s "rich mine of life"; but
when Cather turned to other themes, the reviewers continued to praise
her "faithful use" of the frontier realities she was trying to escape. |
| B CHESTNUT |
MARY BOYKIN CHESTNUT. A Diary From Dixie - The governor’s daughter was accepted everywhere; her husband was
a senator, aide to Jefferson Davis and heir to a great plantation. In her
lively, keenly observant diary, she gives an insider’s view of the
Confederacy and expresses her hatred of slavery and her sympathy
for black folk. |
| FIC |
AGATHA CHRISTIE. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Dedicated to those "who like orthodox detective stories," her book was
hailed as a masterpiece by many and challenged as unorthodox by some
“whodunit” purists. But Dame Agatha remains popular and her readers
still join Poirot and Miss Marple in unraveling intricate clues. |
| FIC |
SANDRA CISNEROS. House on Mango Street - Latina poet, short-story writer and novelist; Cisneros’ fiction features
Chicanas who take control of their lives. Esperanza embodies female
possibilities as she learns from other women to transcend the threatening
barrio through art, and to assume a social obligation to the community. |
| FIC |
ANITA DESAI. Clear Light of Day - An examination of contemporary India and a family history in which two
sisters learn that although there will always be family tears, the ability to
forgive and forget is a powerful ally against life’s sorrows. |
| FIC |
ANITA DIAMANT. The Red Tent. -
Dinah, Jacob’s daughter and a very minor character in the Old Testament;
is given flesh and feeling in this imaginative retelling of her life. |
| 811.4 DIC |
EMILY DICKINSON. The Poems of Emily Dickinson - Her writing described as explosive, elliptical, fragmented and dazzling,
Dickinson’s poetry has retained its enigmatic force as it continued to speak to
us today. |
| 967.62 D58 |
ISAK DINESEN. Out of Africa - Karen Blixen, known to most by her pen name, is one of Denmark’s most
widely acclaimed modern authors. Twice nominated for the Nobel Prize,
Blixen is probably better known to American readers as a marvelous auto-
biographical writer; as Out of Africa demonstrates. |
| FIC |
MARGARET DRABBLE. Radiant Way - Drabble, known for her domestic novels exploring women’s inner lives, writes
a trilogy that follows the lives of three women who began a friendship while
they were students at Cambridge in the 1950’s. This book was followed by
A Natural Curiosity and The Gates of Ivory. |
| FIC |
FRANCESCA DURANTI. House on Moon Lake - Currently one of the most widely read Italian writers, Duranti’s work
often deals with the nature of writing and the role of the writer. |
| 289.52 Ed21 |
MARY BAKER EDDY. Science and Health When a passage from Matthew brought swift recovery from an accident,
her ideas about God and Mind coalesced in a creed that sustained her in
"gentle power" in her lifetime, and a book (the official statement of Christian Science principles) that upholds her teachings still. |
| FIC |
GEORGE ELIOT. Middlemarch - As editor of an intellectual journal, she learned new ideas about motivation
and inner life and felt concern that women’s idealism was wasted in trivia.
Her novel about unhappy marriages in a provincial town was hailed by Virginia Woolf as "one of the few written for grown-ups." |
| B ADDAMS, J. |
ELSHTAIN, JEAN BETHKE. Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy -
Biography of Nobel Peace Prize Winner and founder of Hull House. Elshtain
seeks to reassess Addams’ cultural and political impact on her time and ours. |
| FIC |
LOUISE ERDRICH. Love Medicine - The first volume in a trilogy celebrating Native American survival. Erdrich, of
Chippewa Native American descent... |
| 320.9597 F55 |
FRANCES FITZGERALD. Fire in the Lake - As a freelance reporter in Saigon after Indochina studies at Yale, she
interpreted Vietnamese culture and analyzed our intervention. Considered
the best scholarly effort by an American, her book has also been praised
for her empathic anecdotes about American soldiers trying to fulfill their
mission. |
| 599.88 F75 |
DIAN FOSSEY. Gorillas in the Mist - Fending off poachers, she reestablished boundaries of the gorilla mountain
sanctuary in Rwanda. For 15 years she lived with free-roaming families,
studying and writing about patterns of gorilla behavior never before
recorded. When the slaughter began again, Dr. Fossey, primatologist,
reverted to Dr. Fossey, conservationist, and was, herself, slaughtered. |
| 809 FRA |
ANNE FRANK. Diary of a Young Girl - For two years she and her parents and five other refugees hid from their
Nazi pursuers in a warehouse attic in Holland. Eventually they were found
and sent to concentration camps. Only Anne’s father survived. He salvaged
his daughter’s remarkable diary, the record of a sensitive adolescent in
starkly oppressive times. |
| 305.42 F89 |
BETTY FRIEDAN. The Feminine Mystique - She succumbed to the postwar push to be a suburban housewife, but
eventually analyzed those pressures in her book. Friedan helped launch
the women’s movement and also founded NOW. Her writings transcend
polarization and caution that to denounce men is counter-productive. |
| 591.92 G64 |
JANE GOODALL. Through a Window: My Thirty Years With the Chimpanzees of Gomke -
Reading like a novel, Goodall tells the dramatic story of thirty years in the life
of a community of chimpanzees--birth and death, sex and love, power and war--
painting a vivid portrait of our closest relatives. |
| B Roosevelt Family |
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN. No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt - Pulitzer Prize-winning biography by a historian who brings to
life the complex relationship between people. Goodwin believes "that to be a
historian is to discover the facts in context; to discover what things mean; to lay
before the reader your reconstruction of time, place, mood; to empathize even
when you disagree." |
| FIC |
NADINE GORDIMER -
Winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Literature, Gordimer’s writing encompasses
the realities of racist politics in colonial and post-apartheid South Africa. |
| 301.412 G81 |
GERMAINE GREER. The Female Eunuch - Her manifesto was considered the most realistic and least anti-male. Never
advocating violent action, she believed that subservience deforms body and
soul and that slaves enslave their masters. She urged women to counteract
domination and to share experiences with each other. |
| 292 HAM |
EDITH HAMILTON. Mythology - From early youth she loved the classics and taught them well. At 63 she
re-told the classics for us--creation, gods and heroes, love and war. In
recognition, she was made an honorary citizen of Athens. |
| 331.481 H29 |
BETTY LEHAN HARRAGAN. Games Mother Never Taught You - An independent business counselor with years of experience, she specialized
in integrating women into the workforce. For those who feel trapped in their
jobs, she pinpoints assumptions that undermine progress, stripping away every
shred of self-pity, playing the corporate game to win. |
| FIC |
KERI HULME. The bone people - New Zealand novelist and poet, Hulme won the Booker Prize in 1985 for this
novel. Concerned with questions of race, culture, gender, and environment; her
work both celebrates and challenges New Zealand landscape and society and
the forces that shape and threaten it. |
| FIC |
ZORA NEALE HURSTON. Their Eyes Are Watching God - A child with no permanent home and no schooling, this survivor studied
with Franz Boas at Barnard and won a fellowship to collect folklore. Her
books reflect her preferred lifestyle: southern, rural, all-black mature
characters not reacting to racism and using dialect with pride. |
| FIC |
SHIRLEY JACKSON. We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Jackson wrote psychological thrillers in which the distinction between fantasy
and reality is blurred. |
| FIC MYST |
P.D. JAMES. A Certain Justice - One of England’s most prominent mystery writers, James began writing later
in her life. Critically acclaimed for her ability to combine complex and puzzling
plots with psychologically believable characters, her novels featuring Commander
Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard are particularly popular with readers. |
| FIC |
RUTH PRAWER JHABVALA. Heat and Dust - Living in India with her husband until 1975 gave Jhabvala her literary
inspirations for novels such as the Booker Prize-winning Heat and Dust. Much
of her fiction explores post-colonial India and relations between Western and Indian peoples. |
| B KELLER |
HELEN KELLER. The Story of My Life - As Annie Sullivan spelled “W-A-T-E-R” into her hand while she pumped
the handle, "that living word" awakened her soul. With sign language,
Braille, and Annie’s alphabet, Helen graduated cum laude from Radcliffe
and went on to devote her life to the blind. |
| FIC |
BARBARA KINGSOLVER. The Poisonwood Bible - A penetrating epic tale of the Price family—an evangelical missionary father,
his wife and their four daughters--as they bring their mission to the Belgian
Congo in 1959. A moving story about the clash of cultures where the political
is personal. |
| 155.93 K95 |
ELIZABETH KUBLER-ROSS. On Death and Dying - Her interdisciplinary seminars taught the steps from fear of death to
acceptance, vanquishing the conspiracy of silence that once shrouded hospital
terminal wards. As leading advocate for the Death Awareness movement, she
added to our knowledge of thanatology and lifted a social taboo. |
| 641.563 LAP |
FRANCES MOORE LAPPE. Diet for a Small Planet - Searching for ways to wipe out famine, she learned that in agribusiness
nutrition is not a priority. Here she deals with protein and how we squander
it in our devotion to the "fatted calf". She offers recipes, charts, and cost
comparisons of non-meat, high-protein cooking. |
| FIC |
HARPER LEE. To Kill a Mockingbird - In the deft, mature handling of the novel’s theme, racial inequality in the
thirties, a child witnesses the trial in which her father, a southern lawyer,
defends a black man accused of rape. |
| FIC |
DORIS LESSING. The Golden Notebook - Born in Persia, raised in South Africa and moving to London when she was
thirty, Lessing probes the representation of political questions from a woman’s
point of view. |
| 128 LIN |
ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH. Gift From the Sea - Explorer, aviatrix, and mother of a large family, she is the epitome of modern
womanhood. Her autobiographical musings use the seashell and the tide’s ebb and flow to symbolize stages of divergence and accommodation in the struggle for self-identity. |
| FIC |
PENELOPE LIVELY. Moon Tiger - Winner of the 1987 Booker Prize, Moon Tiger is the story of Claudia Hampton
as she reviews her life from her deathbed. Liveley tells the tale from the
broadest perspective possible for a human being, a study of one character’s
entire lifetime memory and how one regards it. |
| B MARKHAM, B.C. |
BERYL MARKHAM. West With the Night - Race horse trainer and bush pilot scouting elephants for safaris, she was the
first person to fly the Atlantic from east to west. With a poet’s love for
Kenya, she wrote her memoirs "to bring back a good life and a good country." |
| FIC |
CARSON MCCULLERS. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter -
Suffering from rheumatic fever for most of her life, McCullers’ novels focused
mostly on Southern people who think they’re different and don’t fit in and feel
sad and lonely as a result. Written when she was twenty-three, The Heart is a
Lonely Hunter tells the story of a deaf-mute man and the troubled people who
confide in him. |
| FIC |
TERRY MCMILLAN. Mama -
McMillan shot to fame with her third novel, Waiting to Exhale, and became
the voice of young, professional African-American women. When Mama,
her first novel was published, McMillan promoted the book herself as a
rejection of her publisher’s belief that black readers don’t buy books. |
| 572.99 MEA |
MARGARET MEAD. Coming of Age in Samoa - One of the most widely read pieces of scholarship ever written, Mead was
criticized for suggesting that there were things Americans could learn from
the Samoans about raising children. |
| B MEIR, G.M. |
GOLDA MEIR. My Life - Her remarkable odyssey took her from Cossack pogroms and hazardous flight
from Russia to America. Working with Zionist leaders in Milwaukee, she,
her sister, and their husbands were emboldened to emigrate to Palestine. There she rose from planting saplings in a kibbutz to serving as the democratically elected prime minister of Israel. |
| FIC |
MARGARET MITCHELL. Gone With the Wind -
Reviewers questioned her ambiguity toward Scarlett when she said, "Had she
ever understood Asheley, she would not have loved him; had she understood
Rhett, she would not have lost him." Nevertheless, her Civil War novel
became the best-selling book in America, second only to the Bible. |
| 811.52 MOO |
MARIANNE MOORE. The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore -
Friends of the busy editor of Dial had to "pirate" her poems to get them
published. Awards and recognition from T.S. Eliot and other poets followed;
but, more importantly, she won a host of enthusiastic readers who enjoyed her
satirical "personalities" in which she compares animals with humankind. |
| FIC |
TONI MORRISON. Song of Solomon - As university lecturer and senior editor at Random House, she helped many
young writers. Her own work upset the dominance of black male writers
and ranks highly in American and African-American literature. In this
maturation novel, readers share in the protagonist’s search for identity. |
| FIC |
BHARATI MUKHERJEE. Wife -
Raised in Calcutta, Mukherjee moved to the U.S. in 1961. In Wife, her heroine
violently vents her rage at oppressive cultural traditions, unable to reconcile
the Bengali ideal of the passive wife with life in New York City. |
| FIC |
ALICE MUNRO. Lives of Girls and Women - Known for the way she captures the details of ordinary rural lives, Lives of
Girls and Women earned Munro international attention. The inter-related
short stories describe the childhood of a young woman in rural Canada who
wants to become a writer. Though Munro’s stories are about the peculiarities
of small-town life, the issues she addresses in them are broad and relevant to all. |
| FIC |
LADY SHIKIBU MURASAKI. The Tale of Genji -
Written to be read aloud to Empress Akito’s court, her manuscript survived
for a thousand years; and now, in translation, ranks as any great modern novel.
Prince Genji’s adventures and romances, complicated by court intrigue, are
told with sensitivity, interspersed with poem, evoking Japanese traditions. |
| FIC |
IRIS MURDOCH. The Sea, the Sea -
A Booker Prize winner--this novel concerns a retired theater director who
moves to the seashore in order to think about his life. He recalls that an
adolescent romance, which he greatly idealized, prevented him from
committing himself completely to any of the important women in his life. |
| FIC |
JOYCE CAROL OATES. them -
Winner of the National Book Award, them ranks as one of the most masterly
portraits of postwar America ever written by a novelist. them is a chronicle of
the Wendall family; a family on the edge of poverty in the Detroit slums.
Loretta, Maureen and Jules comprise Oates’ vision of the American family of
the sixties---broken, marginal and romantically proud. |
| FIC |
EDNA O’BRIEN. The Country Girls’ Trilogy and Epilogue -
Irish novelist, short story writer, and playwright; O’Brien is best known
for her stories of girls and women living in Ireland. Her first novel, The
Country Girls, was successful but caused a scandal due to its frank and
Ssensuous descriptions of women’s sexuality and for its clearly
autobiographical elements. |
| FIC |
FLANNERY O’CONNOR. Collected Works -
"All comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and
death," O’Connor was wrote. Born in Georgia of Catholic parents, her
Southern background and Catholicism strongly influenced her writing. |
| FIC |
JULIA O’FAOLAIN. No Country For Young Men -
Born in London, but now living in the U.S., O’Faolain is a prolific novelist
and short story writer. No Country For Young Men is a satirical, painful
comedy about the punishing burdens laid on Irish women by Church, state
and history. |
| FIC |
ZOE OLDENBOURG. The World is Not Enough -
This young Russian scholar, living in France, recreated the life of knights
and ladies in medieval castles and crusaders in the Orient in the 12th and
13th centuries. Praised as both chronicle and rewarding fiction, her book
focuses on a rough, cruel age. |
| FIC |
TILLIE OLSEN. Yonnondio: From the Thirties -
Begun in the 1930’s before Olsen was married, but finally published in 1974,
Yonnondio tells the story of the Holbrook family, specifically Maizie and her
mother, and how their lives, dreams and aspirations are devastated by the
Great Depression, sexism and sexual inequality. Olsen’s writings emphasize her views that those who write, particularly women, must speak for those voices that have been silenced. |
| 227.07 P13 |
ELAINE PAGELS. The Gnostic -
A professor of religion at Princeton and editor of the texts, she explains
why the papyrus scrolls were buried in the early days of Christianity. With careful scholarship, she illuminates the meaning and significance of these
gospels for understanding the origin of Western religion. |
| FIC |
GRACE PALEY. Enormous Changes At the Last Minute -
A writer and political activist, Paley writes short stories set in the working-
class Jewish neighborhoods of New York City. The stories in Enormous
Changes At the Last Minute focus on family relationships where men come
and go, but women look to their children for hope and inspiration. Using sympathy and humor, Paley creates believable characters. |
| FIC |
DOROTHY PARKER. Complete Stories - Founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, Parker’s stories are known
for their sharp dialogue, detail and use of irony. |
| FIC |
JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS. Machine Dreams -
Phillips’ debut novel, Machine Dreams, introduces the Hampsons, an
ordinary, small-town American family profoundly affected by history--from
the Depression through the Vietnam War. The thoughts, dreams and memories
of each family member propel this epic chronicle. |
| FIC |
MARGE PIERCY. Small Changes -
Poet and novelist, Marge Piercy, is one of America’s foremost feminist writers. Her early novels are often used in women’s studies courses. Small Changes,
published in 1973, tells the story of Miriam, who trades her doctorate for
marriage and security but who hungers for a life of her own, and Beth, shy
and frightened and running from the life Miriam seeks. |
| FIC |
SYLVIA PLATH. The Bell Jar - The narrator is a talented, achieving young woman who slips down into
madness but recovers at the end. Not so with the author who committed
suicide shortly before the publication of the book. Plath’s major theme--troubling in spite of its wit--is the hostility between men and women. |
| FIC |
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER. Ship of Fools - Borrowing title and theme from Sebastian Brant’s 16th century verses, she
explored the ethos of diverse passengers sailing from Vera Cruz to
Bremerhaven on the eve of Hitler’s accession. She leaves the reader with
this caveat: "evil is always done with the collusion of good." |
| FIC |
E. ANNIE PROULX. The Shipping News - Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, Proulx is said to be a recluse who avoids publicity. Her novels, however, have focused the spotlight on her. Connections to the land and family heritage characterize her writing as in The Shipping News, which tells of Quoyle, a journalist who settles on a remote Canadian island where his ancestors lived; determined to leave his troubled past behind him. |
| FIC |
BARBARA PYM. Less Than Angels - A British novelist, Pym’s novels are characterized by their ironic treatment of
small-town life, spinsterhood, unrequited love and the importance of institutions
such as the Church and the local library in the lives of educated, middle-class
women. |
| P.C. |
AYN RAND. The Fountainhead -
Russian emigree, atheist and radical capitalist; Ayn Rand wrote novels, essays
and plays. A rugged individualist and a believer in rational self-interest, her
ideas inspired many followers. The Fountainhead is a novel that explores the
idea of and defends positive rational egoism.
|
| FIC |
MARY RENAULT. The King Must Die -
Renault is famous for her meticulously researched and evocative novels of
ancient Greece. The King Must Die retells the youth of Theseus, his encounter with the minotaur, and his attempts to tell the story minus its mythical embellishments. Theseus is portrayed as part of a rising male social order ruled by male sky gods, at a time when matriarchal cultures and earth-mother
goddesses were waning in influence.
|
| 301.427 R49 |
ADRIENNE RICH. Of Woman Born -
As scholar and writer, she studied at Radcliffe and Oxford and had her first
book of poems selected by W.H. Auden for a Yale series. As a mother, she
had three sons, "a radicalizing experience." Here she describes her attempt
to resolve the conflict between writing and motherhood and "to understand
what guilt is all about."
|
| FIC |
ARUNDHATI ROY. The God of Small Things -
The 1997 Booker Prize Winner, The God of Small Things, "isn’t a book
about India...It is a book about human nature," writes Roy. The novel paints
a vivid picture of life in a small rural Indian town and is a lesson in the
destructive power of the caste system and moral and political bigotry in general.
|
| FIC |
GEORGE SAND. Lelia -
Born Aurore Dupin, Sand is easily the best-known French woman writer of
the 19th century. Known for her feminist and humanitarianist writings, she is
responsible for the line describing marriage as "one of the most barbaric
institutions [society] ever invented."
|
| FIC |
MAY SARTON. The Small Room -
Friendship...solitude...lesbianism...women’s creativity. These are themes explored in Sarton’s work. A prolific author, Sarton was born in Belgium but
fled with her family to the U.S. when she was young. Writing novels, poems
and journals, Sarton "delves into the personal to reveal the universal."
|
| 150.19 SAY |
JANEL SAYERS. Mothers of Psychoanalysis: Helen Deutch, Karen Horney,
SAY Anna Freud, and Melanie Klein -
Sayers attempts to trace the shift of psychoanalysis from a patriarchal to a
matriarchal emphasis by analyzing the lives and works of the most prominent
female successors to Freud.
|
| FIC |
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY. Frankenstein -
Shelley’s first novel, published when she was twenty-one, reflects the style of
the gloomy and sinister Gothic novels that were popular at the time of its publication. Frankenstein was immediately successful.
|
| 306.461 S69 |
SUSAN SONTAG. Of Woman Born -
First used in political rhetoric in the French Revolution, disease imagery
continues in modern psychological explanations for illness. The author
turns a "moralist’s scorn" toward the misleading use of tuberculosis and
cancer as metaphors. |
| B TOKLAS, A. |
GERTRUDE STEIN. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas -
Supposedly ghostwriting her companion’s autobiography, she produced
an engrossing account of expatriates in Paris. Encouraged by William James
at Radcliffe to experiment with words for their associational qualities, feeling
like a creative kindred spirit, she befriended Hemingway, Picasso, and other
writers and artists searching for new forms. |
| 155.2 STE |
GLORIA STEINEM. Revolution From Within: A Book of Self-Esteem -
Founding editor of Ms. Magazine, Steinem recounts how, through returning
to her childhood self by using techniques such as meditation, she rediscovers the strong person inside her insecure shell. |
| FIC |
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. Uncle Tom’s Cabin -
Aroused when runaway slaves were pursued, almost in a trance she wrote
about a slave beaten to death by the plantation overseer. A million people
read her novel. On meeting her, Lincoln is reputed to have said, "So you
are the little woman who started this big war." |
| B SUYIN, H. |
HAN SUYIN. My House Has Two Doors -
Literary critics have been angered by her outspoken views and disgust for
Western values, but Suyin has said, "I write as an Asian, with all the pent-up
emotions of my people...all I can say is that I try to tell the Truth; surgery
may hurt, but it cures." |
| 284.4 TER |
MOTHER TERESA. No Greater Love - Roman Catholic nun, teacher and
missionary, Mother Teresa won the Novel Peace Prize in 1979. Experience
her words and learn more about this remarkable woman’s life. |
| 909.3 T88 |
BARBARA TUCHMAN. A Distant Mirror -
Likening the 14th century to our own with its breakdown of authority, she
studied the great Froissart’s documentation of that period. With the spotlight
on de Coucy, the most experienced knight in France, she brought time, place,
hero alive in a brilliant novel about an unfamiliar period. |
| FIC |
SIGRID UNDSET. Kristin Lavransdatter -
Archeologist’s daughter and cultural historian, she turned to 14th-century
Norway, in transition from the Viking age to Christianity, to mirror modern
conflicts. In their passage from passionate youth to final resignation and
peace, her main characters are fully developed, credible, and unforgettable. |
| FIC |
ALICE WALKER. The Color Purple -
Child of sharecroppers, world-wide activist, editor, and professor, she
brings to fiction the strengths of black idiom, musical and easy to read. In
this epistolary novel, Celie’s letters to God and to her sister in Africa help
her surmount her degrading circumstances. |
| FIC |
EUDORA WELTY. Delta Wedding -
For her, atmosphere is the most important element in a story. At this gathering
on a Mississippi plantation, very little seems to be happening; but through
the impressions of a young girl listening to shifting points of view, we witness
disagreements resolved and family ties renewed. |
| FIC |
EDITH WHARTON. Ethan Frome -
When critics called this New England tragedy her best book, she was displeased
and said that The Age of Innocence about New York society was much more
characteristic of her work. Readers, however, respond to the realism with which
she depicts human nature, regardless of the setting. |
| FIC |
VIRGINIA WOOLF. Mrs. Dalloway -
The lives of a number of people connect on the day of Clarice Dalloway’s
party. Relying heavily on recollection, memory and random thought processes
to build a collage of characterizations, Woolf uses a stream-of-consciousness
style of writing that places her as a modernist writer. |
| FIC |
MARGUERITE YOURCENAR. The Abyss -
In 1980, the first woman to be elected to the Academie Francaise, Yourcenar
felt that she did not write as a woman, but as an author who happened to be
a woman, and whose work should be judged on its merit alone. |