Despite extraordinary attention within the past five years by novelists, playwrights, and critics, the subject of mothers and daughters, and motherhood and daughterhood, has remained complicated and compelling. Mother Puzzles is a unique collection that examines how women who write have dealt with those relationships. Pearlman notes in her introduction that missing mothers--mothers who are physically present but emotionally absent--are often found in works by women. The question this collection addresses is why the mother, as currently portrayed in American literature by women, has...
Despite extraordinary attention within the past five years by novelists, playwrights, and critics, the subject of mothers and daughters, and mother...
American literature is no longer the refuge of the solitary hero. Like the society it mirrors, it is now a far richer, many-faceted explication of a complicated and diverse society -- racially, culturally, and ethnically interwoven and at the same time fractured and fractious.
Ten women writing fiction in America today -- Toni Cade Bambara, Joan Didion, Louise Erdrich, Gail Godwin, Mary Gordon, Alison Lurie, Joyce Carol Oates, Jayne Anne Phillips, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, and Mary Lee Settle -- represent that geographic, ethnic, and racial diversity that is distinctively American....
American literature is no longer the refuge of the solitary hero. Like the society it mirrors, it is now a far richer, many-faceted explication of ...
Twenty-eight powerful and individual voices are heard as Pearlman and Henderson offer a forum for a generous cross-section of the women writing fiction in America today -- writers whose vital statistics cross the borders of race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual preference, marital status, age, geography, and lifestyle. Each writer is presented in an essay/interview reflecting the dynamic that develops naturally when two vital minds meet to discuss topic of mutually interest. The writers talk about the role of memory, space, and family in their work, about politics, dreams, and race, about...
Twenty-eight powerful and individual voices are heard as Pearlman and Henderson offer a forum for a generous cross-section of the women writing fic...
Why are so many fictional characters named Anna (or a variant), and what does this signify? The startling prevalence of Hannah/Anna/Anne moves from biblical literature ("Old Testament" Hannah and "New Testament" St. Anne) to classics ("Anna Karenina" and "Anne Elliot") to popular fiction (Anna Dunlop in Sue Miller's "The Good Mother"), children's literature ("Anne of Green Gables"), films ("Hannah and Her Sisters"), and horror (Annie Wilkes in Stephen King's "Misery"). Does this represent a conscious or unconscious search for the ultimate or missing mother harking back to mythical and...
Why are so many fictional characters named Anna (or a variant), and what does this signify? The startling prevalence of Hannah/Anna/Anne moves from...
