Creating Safe Space
Violence and Women's Writing
Published on 4. December 1997
Book
Hardback
239 pages
978-0-7914-3563-2 (ISBN)
Description
An anthology of literary essays focusing on the ways in which sexual, emotional, physical, racial, and other forms of violence have affected women artists' imaginations.
Creating Safe Space: Violence and Women's Writing defines the role of women's writing in the face of violence and suggests the degree to which violence has affected women from diverse periods, places, and social backgrounds. The book examines the ways in which women use their writing to redefine their experiences of abuse, to give themselves a voice in order to break the silence imposed on women in patriarchal society, and to start challenging and changing a culture that objectifies, degrades, and destroys women.
The women discussed in the book include established authors, such as Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Charlotte Bronte, as well as contemporary artists including Anne Rice and Joy Kogawa.
A number of essays illuminate ways in which writing can be employed in women's workshops and college classrooms. They bridge the interdisciplinary distances among the fields of literary criticism, creative writing, psychology, sociology, social welfare, history, journalism, education, and others in which feminist scholars have worked to draw public attention to, and provide solutions to, the various kinds of abuse women endure.
Creating Safe Space: Violence and Women's Writing defines the role of women's writing in the face of violence and suggests the degree to which violence has affected women from diverse periods, places, and social backgrounds. The book examines the ways in which women use their writing to redefine their experiences of abuse, to give themselves a voice in order to break the silence imposed on women in patriarchal society, and to start challenging and changing a culture that objectifies, degrades, and destroys women.
The women discussed in the book include established authors, such as Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Charlotte Bronte, as well as contemporary artists including Anne Rice and Joy Kogawa.
A number of essays illuminate ways in which writing can be employed in women's workshops and college classrooms. They bridge the interdisciplinary distances among the fields of literary criticism, creative writing, psychology, sociology, social welfare, history, journalism, education, and others in which feminist scholars have worked to draw public attention to, and provide solutions to, the various kinds of abuse women endure.
Reviews / Votes
"Creating Safe Space is an extremely important addition to the feminist work on sexual violence. Each essay in this marvelous collection documents how women writers have, for centuries, given voice through art to the abuse they suffered. This collection will ensure that their writing will be read as testimony." - Louise DeSalvo, Hunter CollegeMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Albany, NY
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
US School Grade: College Graduate Student and over
Weight
499 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7914-3563-2 (9780791435632)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Tomoko Kuribayashi is Assistant Professor of English at Trinity College of Vermont. Julie Tharp is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin.
Content
INTRODUCTION
THEORIZING OUR LIVES
I Stand Here Naked, and Best Dressed in Theory:
Feminist Re-fashionings of Academic Discourse
Brenda Daly
The Solace of Separation:
Feminist Theory, Autobiography, Edith Wharton, and Me
Susan L. Woods
Fighting Back on Paper and in Real Life:
Sexual Abuse Narratives and the Creation of Safe Space
Sonia C. Apgar
SURVIVING
Incest and Rage in Charlotte Bronte's Novelettes
Susan Anne Carlson
Safe Space or Danger Zone?:
Incest and the Paradox of Writing in Woolf's Life
Diana L. Swanson
"One Need not be a Chamber-to be Haunted":
Emily Dickinson's Haunted Space
Mary Jo Dondlinger
"There is no home there": Re(his)tor(iciz)ing Captivity and the Other in Spofford's "Circumstance"
Lisa Logan
"Entirely Unprotected": Rebecca Ketcham's Trail Diary
Mary Sylwester
Safe Space and Storytelling: Willa Cather's Shadows on the Rock
Linda K. Karell
THRIVING
The Chicana Girl Writes Her Way In and Out: Space and Bilingualism in Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street
Tomoko Kuribayashi
Abuse and Its Pleasures: Compensatory Fantasy in the Popular Fiction of Anne Rice
Annalee Newitz
On Blues, Autobiography, and Performative Utterance: The Jouissance of Alberta Hunter
Kari J. Winter
"In the Center of My Body is a Rift": Trauma and Recovery in Joy Kogawa's Obasan and Itsuka
Julie Tharp
CONTRIBUTORS
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
AUTHOR INDEX
Subject Indexs
THEORIZING OUR LIVES
I Stand Here Naked, and Best Dressed in Theory:
Feminist Re-fashionings of Academic Discourse
Brenda Daly
The Solace of Separation:
Feminist Theory, Autobiography, Edith Wharton, and Me
Susan L. Woods
Fighting Back on Paper and in Real Life:
Sexual Abuse Narratives and the Creation of Safe Space
Sonia C. Apgar
SURVIVING
Incest and Rage in Charlotte Bronte's Novelettes
Susan Anne Carlson
Safe Space or Danger Zone?:
Incest and the Paradox of Writing in Woolf's Life
Diana L. Swanson
"One Need not be a Chamber-to be Haunted":
Emily Dickinson's Haunted Space
Mary Jo Dondlinger
"There is no home there": Re(his)tor(iciz)ing Captivity and the Other in Spofford's "Circumstance"
Lisa Logan
"Entirely Unprotected": Rebecca Ketcham's Trail Diary
Mary Sylwester
Safe Space and Storytelling: Willa Cather's Shadows on the Rock
Linda K. Karell
THRIVING
The Chicana Girl Writes Her Way In and Out: Space and Bilingualism in Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street
Tomoko Kuribayashi
Abuse and Its Pleasures: Compensatory Fantasy in the Popular Fiction of Anne Rice
Annalee Newitz
On Blues, Autobiography, and Performative Utterance: The Jouissance of Alberta Hunter
Kari J. Winter
"In the Center of My Body is a Rift": Trauma and Recovery in Joy Kogawa's Obasan and Itsuka
Julie Tharp
CONTRIBUTORS
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
AUTHOR INDEX
Subject Indexs