An Alchemy of Genres

This work analyzes the hybrid forms women create to express multiple and conflicting identities in a culture that is seen to silence persons not of the dominant gender, race, ethnicity, class or sexual orientation. Providing a theoretical framework for approaching women writers and women's writing, Freedman explores the power of the cross-genre compositional practice of such authors as Adrienne Rich, Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Maxine Hong Kingston, Louise Bernikov, Marge Piercy and Alice Walker. Placing cross-genre writing by feminists in the historical moment that links feminist, poststructuralist, psychoanalytical, reader-response and composition theories with the ongoing challenge represented by poet-critics of the past, Freedman argues that women writing today are frequently situated in a crossroads or border zone, looking both forward and back. At once wary and defiant, they combine women's formerly private forms and homespun imagery with varieties of public discourse to challenge the critical as well as the literary canon.
By blurring or crossing genres, feminist poet-critics simultaneously give voice to hybrid identities, resist assimilation by the dominant discourse of US academic culture and yet reach toward collaboration and community.