Calling

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this absorbing, insightful collection of 15 essays in a feminist vein, Griffin reflects on life in academia, mainly at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, where she is chair of the English Department and director of women's studies. Her voice is wise, wry, self-critical and passionate as she discusses the growth of her feminist consciousness. She deftly employs passages from Alice in Wonderland to counterpoint her amusing account of the Kalamazoo faculty's convoluted attempts to cope with a proposed women's studies course. She involves Emily Dickinson and Jane Eyre as she describes how her female students struggle to find their voices. Ruminating on sexual harassment, she explains how she grew to believe consensual professor-student sex should be prohibited, but admits she has fantasized about students and recalls how one student told her that the professor she followed to California was the one good thing about this place. In a lecture delivered on campus, Griffin recounts how a sticker on her door, Feminist Spoken Here, has sparked the most significant discussions she has had at the college. Those interested in education, not only in women's studies, could learn from this book. (Sept.)

Library Journal

With a mixture of autobiographical facts and literary insights, the author (English, Kalamazoo Coll.) supports her belief that the ``motherheart must be at the center of all teaching.'' Teachers should ``create an environment where human beings can grow in and toward the fullness of themselves.'' This type of teaching is exemplified by the women teachers in higher education of the mid-1800s who, as the author found following her ``calling'' to Kalamazoo College, were the leaders in a profession that often brings teacher and student together in crisis situations, situations that the author believes are better confronted from a feminist perspective. This is a well-written, often humorous account of one woman's entry into the feminist side of academe.-- A.R. Huggins, Memphis State Univ. Libs., Tenn.