The Crimson Edge

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The writing in this anthology is quite accomplished, but the selection process remains a mystery. Seven women over 60 (including Zeidenstein herself, who is also the editor of A Wider Giving) contribute work (usually several poems and stories) plus individual afterwords about the state of their work at the moment, but there is no indication of why (or if) these seven are considered representative of women their age. Most of the afterwords acknowledge an autobiographical element. In "Brother-Sister Act," Alvia Golden describes a woman visiting her dying brother in the hospital and wondering where he was when she was abused by their father; in "Acting Out," she portrays a woman attending a school reunion and wondering who does and doesn't know she's a lesbian. Many stories recall passionate relationships: Estelle Leontief contributes one long story ("Sellie and Dee") about a girl who has a fervent affair with her best friend; "Dance Steps" studies the end of an affair between an older woman and a younger man. The poetry is pleasingly concrete and narrative. Rita Kiefer's "Ex-Nun in a Red Mercedes" describes the experience of leaving a convent. Carrie Allen McCray wonders whether white people worry about the skin color of criminals when watching the news in "Do White People." In "I have a poem inside me," she recounts the subtle way her husband stopped her from writing by declaring "I am the writer in the family." Zeidenstein's "On Learning, Years Later, That My Father Had a Mistress" is full of hindsight and the careful observations that typify this collection. (Mar.)

Library Journal

Editor Zeidenstein broke new ground with her first volume of The Crimson Edge in 1996. Here she has again collected poetry, fiction, and memoir by seven diverse women writers over the age of 60. But these works are by no means all about old age. Joan Swift's poems speak about her rape, the man who raped her, and its effect on her life; Nellie Wong advocates social action from her perspective as a Chinese American; and Florence Weinberger's poems span four generations of Jewish heritage. Especially noteworthy are Pearl Garrett Crayton's stories of growing up on a cotton plantation in Louisiana, which glow with a special luminance, capturing the Southern black dialect and the folktale influence on the sharecropper. With our population growing older, the stories of these women, moving and original, need to be heard. Highly recommended for all public libraries.--Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Brockport Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.