African American Arts & Entertainment, American & Canadian Literature, Ethnic & Race Relations, Women's Biography, General & Miscellaneous Literary Criticism, Women's Biography, Interviews
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Overview
The history of the relationship between black and white women is a tangle of suspicion, mistrust, resentment, anger, curiosity, and fear that remains submerged in silence, superficial courtesy, and shallow tolerance. Despite these barriers, some women develop rewarding, long-lasting friendships rooted in honesty, mutual respect, genuine acceptance -- all necessary ingredients for building the trust that is the foundation for friendship.By selecting articulate, amusing, impassioned, and introspective authors who have portrayed characters across race lines, Jordan focuses on commonalities, as well as important differences, in this creative process. A rare opportunity to read the private thoughts about race and creativity of Joyce Carol Oates, Belva Plain, Grace Paley, Sherley Anne Williams, and others. Illustrated.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
In these 20 interviews with women writers of fiction, Jordan, who teaches at Hampton University in Virginia, attempts to plumb the relations between black and white women in fiction and in life, and to explore the creative process. Although the book suffers from lengthy discussions of somewhat obscure work, the interviewees, most of whom have portrayed female characters of a race other than their own, offer intriguing, often conflicting observations about the primacy of race, gender or class. Kaye Gibbons ( Ellen Foster ) suggests that rural locations offer commonality to black and white Southern women; Marita Golden ( Long Distance Life ) observes that white writers emphasize female beauty while black writers focus on character. This book may be a useful supplement to literature courses. Photos. (May)Library Journal
The message derived from the candid and articulate women interviewed here is, as Belva Plain states, ``you learn as you live together.'' Editor Jordan (Hampton Univ., Virginia) has opened a dialog on writing and race relations by publishing these interviews with 20 significant contemporary black and white women writers, from Alice Childress and Joyce Carol Oates to Mildred Pitts Walker. The substance of these writers' thoughts is that the commonality of women's experience informs the genuine portrayal of a character as much as does the writer's understanding of her blackness or whiteness. This special book, so different from others that examine the writing process, is likely to stimulate dialog among women and to provoke serious study of many excellent women writers working today. Recommended for all collections supporting the study of literature, women's studies, and race relations.-- Susan E. Parker, Harvard Law Sch. Lib.Book Details
Published
June 30, 1995
Publisher
New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, c1993.
Pages
254
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780813519333