Please help me with American women's lit

[rookie]

My dd14 wants to focus on American women authors and study them/their works in chronological order parallel to American history.

 

Please share which women authors you would include.

 

Thank you.

[Already Gone]

I'll try and post a longer list when I have the time (this is probably the one subject I know way too much about), but I would say that any such list really, really, really needs to have some Willa Cather on it. Very accessible, but also very deep and very brilliant.

 

Are you interested in poetry and drama as well as novels? Are you looking for works that have specific tie-ins to historical moments? And how would your describe your daughter's reading level and--how shall I put this--her maturity? There are some important books that one might not want a 14 year-old to read, depending on where she is.

[Michele B]

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/writers/Writers_Authors_Poets_Publishers.htm

 

Hope that helps:001_smile:

[rookie]

I'll try and post a longer list when I have the time (this is probably the one subject I know way too much about), but I would say that any such list really, really, really needs to have some Willa Cather on it. Very accessible, but also very deep and very brilliant.

 

Are you interested in poetry and drama as well as novels? Are you looking for works that have specific tie-ins to historical moments? And how would your describe your daughter's reading level and--how shall I put this--her maturity? There are some important books that one might not want a 14 year-old to read, depending on where she is.

 

 

 

Thank you for the reply.

 

My dd reads at college level and is mature. That said, she has not read any modern Young Adult like books. Her reading has been strictly "classics" and any adult themes that would be found in those.

 

She LOVES Willa Cather and would definitely include her on the list.

 

I think that we would like the list to have a tie-in to America's history - so chronological order - and read a bio on the author then a couple of works by the author.

 

Yes, poetry, plays, etc., can be part of the list.

 

I know that this list can become VERY long so I guess that what I need in the quintessential / distilled / essential guide to American's women's lit from 1600s to present.

 

Thanks! Can't wait to see your recommendations!!

[rookie]

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/writers/Writers_Authors_Poets_Publishers.htm

 

Hope that helps:001_smile:

 

Very helpful. Thank you!

[Already Gone]

So here are a few of my thoughts, trying to emphasize things that can be tied into historical moments. You probably realize that there's a bit of a gap between that and "the quintessential / distilled / essential guide to American's women's lit," since a lot of women's lit, especially early on, tends to focus on the domestic. Because of the overlap of feminism and women's lit, a lot of the really canonical material is going to be more about the personal as political than about the political in and of itself. So I could expand this a great deal in terms of what she might read in a typical women's lit course in college, if that's more the direction you're thinking.

 

Just to get you started, though:

 

 

 

• Mary Rowlandson, (The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, 1682. One woman's story of being taken captive by Native Americans)
  
• Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852. Probably a no-brainer.)
  
• Mary Chesnut (Diary, covers the Civil War but published in 1905)
  
• Harriet Jacobs (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 1861)
  
• Louisa May Alcott (Work, 1872. Follows a young woman through a wide variety of different employment situations.)
  
• Nella Larson, (Quicksand, 1928. Follows a young African-American woman through a wide variety of different employment situations. Good look at different aspects of African-American experience in the early part of the century--Tuskegee, Harlem Renaissance, etc.)
  

 

Many of these have "adult situations" but nothing risque.

[Hunter]

You will definately want to include the short stories of Kate Chopin and Flannery O Connor.

[regentrude]

You may want to include these short stories:

 

Susan Glaspell Jury of her peers

Shirley Jackson The lottery

 

if you view American as not just US, definitely include Margaret Atwood.

[kokotg]

oh, goodness. my list (as always, with a bias toward modernism and southerners):

 

Willa Cather

Edith Wharton

Zora Neale Hurston

Eudora Welty

Katherine Anne Porter

Flannery O' Connor

Toni Morrison

Marianne Moore

Edna St. Vincent Millay

H.D.

Gertrude Stein

Alice McDermott

Adrienne Rich

Gwendolyn Brooks

Elizabeth Bishop

Emily Dickinson

Mary Oliver

Sylvia Plath

[plansrme]

My dd14 wants to focus on American women authors and study them/their works in chronological order parallel to American history.

Please share which women authors you would include.

 

Thank you.

 

Nothing to add; just want to give both of you a :hurray: for even coming up with the idea. Mind if I steal it? ;)

 

Terri

[Harriet Vane]

You've gotten some excellent suggestions. I will just emphasize the recommendation for Zora Neale Hurston. Of the African-American experience books I read as an English major, this one was by far my favorite. Many of the Af-Am books were extremely dark; others were overly idealized. Their Eyes Were Watching God, however, stood out in that it contains a gripping story with both the richness of the Af-Am culture as well as the pain. My opinion of this book as a good representation for the Af-Am experience has strengthened in the last fourteen years that I have lived as a white woman in an African-American section of the city.

 

While I'm at it, I'll throw in my thumbs-up for Flannery O'Connor and for Willa Cather.

[rookie]

Nothing to add; just want to give both of you a :hurray: for even coming up with the idea. Mind if I steal it? ;)

 

Terri

 

 

You are sweet. :001_smile:

Steal away!

[rookie]

Thank you for all of the great suggestions! :001_smile: I am getting so excited planning this out for her (and me ;)).

 

What do you think of including the following?:

 

Anne Bradford

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harper Lee

Ayn Rand

Pearl Buck

 

(Don't think these were mentioned before but if they were, thanks!)

[rookie]

So here are a few of my thoughts, trying to emphasize things that can be tied into historical moments. You probably realize that there's a bit of a gap between that and "the quintessential / distilled / essential guide to American's women's lit," since a lot of women's lit, especially early on, tends to focus on the domestic. Because of the overlap of feminism and women's lit, a lot of the really canonical material is going to be more about the personal as political than about the political in and of itself. So I could expand this a great deal in terms of what she might read in a typical women's lit course in college, if that's more the direction you're thinking.

 

Just to get you started, though:

 

 

 

• Mary Rowlandson, (The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, 1682. One woman's story of being taken captive by Native Americans)

• Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852. Probably a no-brainer.)

• Mary Chesnut (Diary, covers the Civil War but published in 1905)

• Harriet Jacobs (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 1861)

• Louisa May Alcott (Work, 1872. Follows a young woman through a wide variety of different employment situations.)

• Nella Larson, (Quicksand, 1928. Follows a young African-American woman through a wide variety of different employment situations. Good look at different aspects of African-American experience in the early part of the century--Tuskegee, Harlem Renaissance, etc.)

 

Many of these have "adult situations" but nothing risque.

 

 

Very helpful. Thank you.

[Chelli]

I also thought of Phillis Wheatley and Abigail Adams (her letters to John) for the Revolutionary/colonial period. Laura Ingalls Wilder (A Little House Traveler) for westward expansion time period.

[rookie]

I also thought of Phillis Wheatley and Abigail Adams (her letters to John) for the Revolutionary/colonial period. Laura Ingalls Wilder (A Little House Traveler) for westward expansion time period.

 

Thanks!

[Already Gone]

What do you think of including the following?:

 

Anne Bradford

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harper Lee

Ayn Rand

Pearl Buck

 

 

My two cents. . .the first two would be excellent choices, given what you've described as your goals. Harper Lee would be fine for a look at the pre-civil-rights era, though I think in many ways Quicksand or Their Eyes Were Watching God would be better--perhaps less accessible, though. Of the two, in my humble opinion, Quicksand covers more historical ground and Their Eyes Were Watching God is the better novel.

 

Which Ayn Rand were you thinking? I can definitely see how she ties into a specific historical moment, but both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have some male/female interactions that might be difficult for a young woman (I say this as someone who was about your daughter's age when I first read them). I don't know what your values are, of course, but both feminists and conservative Christians have found these problematic--not to put too fine a point on it, The Fountainhead eroticizes rape, and while Atlas Shrugged doesn't go that far, it tends in that direction (also it's huge, but your daughter may be fine with that :)). She wrote some other works, of course, but honestly I can't remember how the relationships are portrayed in them.

 

I have to confess that I've never read Pearl Buck. But I understand that most of her work is about China? So it may be hard to find something to tie directly into U.S. history.

 

When I tried to come up with my original list, I found it skewing mightily towards southern and modernist lit as well. There's some great stuff in that period, but part of what you probably want to decide is whether you want to go for historical relevance or literary quality. Alas, the two things do not always go hand in hand. . .