Language in Her Eye: Views on Writing and Gender by Canadian Women Writing in English - Softcover

Scheier, Liba

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0889103976 ISBN 13: 9780889103979

Publisher: ECW Press, 1990

Synopsis

This collection of original essays, articles, and commentaries by 44 distinguished authors, poets, fiction writers, essayists, biographers, and journalists includes contributions from Margaret Atwood, Dionne Brand, June Callwood, Barbara Godard, Janette Turner Hospital, Linda Hutcheon, Paulette Jiles, Dorothy Livesay, Daphne Marlatt, Erin Moure, Erika Ritter, Jane Rule, Gail Scott, Carol Shields, and Susan Swan. Topics include the existence—or lack thereof—of a specifically female or feminist point of view; appropriation of voice; the influence of various currents in feminist literary theory; the particular versus the universal, and the ambiguities inherent in such issue. Articulate, revelatory, and humorous, these essays are essential reading for those interested in the most transformative and influential social and cultural movement of this century.

About this title

About the Author

Libby Scheier is the author of Kaddish for My Father. Sarah Sheard is the author of Almost Japanese.

Reviews

This splendidly diverse collection reflecting on the uneasy relationship between politics and literature will appeal to writers and readers of feminist prose. Margaret Atwood argues that feminism should liberate women writers, not simply replace one set of taboos with another: "We were told endlessly: thou shalt notstet ital . We don't need to hear it again, and especially not from women." Lee Maracle makes a charge of plagiarism against writers who appropriate and anthologize Native stories, reducing them to so-called "Indian Mythology" that she terms "anthropocentric drivel." Margaret Hollingsworth notes in turn that "nobody ownsstet ital a myth, a culture, a story" as she contemplates how men dominate Canadian theater and debates whether her plays should reflect larger social concerns. Scheier reviews feminist deconstruction, the false "binary opposition" of feminist and writer in her sense of identity, and concludes that writing can express inspiration as well as ideology. Scheier asks rhetorically, "What's wrong with mixing a little mystification . . . and romanticism into one's deconstructionism? Takes the edge off." The editors are Canadian writers.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: ECW Press
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0889103976
• ISBN 13: 9780889103979
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312
• Editor: Scheier Libby, Sheard Sarah, Wachtel Eleanor