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First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
List of contents
Preface and Acknowledgments * Introduction: Women on the Edge: Ethnicity and Gender in Short Stories by American Women, Corinne H. Dale and J.H.E. Paine * (Dis) Continuous Narrative: The Articulation of a Chicana Feminist Voice in Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, Deborah L. Madsen * Beyond Otherness: Negotiated Identities and Viramontes' The Cariboo Cafe, Marta Caminero-Santangelo * Judith Ortiz Cofer's Silent Dancing: Making More Room for Puerto Rican Womanhood, Nancy L. Chick * Flight and Arrival: A Study of Padma Hejmadi's Short Story, Weather Report, Lakshmi Holmstrsm * Subversive Extravagance: Women in Hisaye Yamamoto's Seventeen Syllables and The Legend of Miss Sasagawara, Veronica C. Wang * Afrekete Rising: Two Coming-out Stories by African American Lesbians: Pat Suncircle's A Day's Growth and Audre Lorde's The Beginning, M. Charlene Ball * Race/[Gender]: Toni Morrison's Recitatif, David Goldstein-Shirley * Playing in the Light: White Girls Dreaming in Eudora Welty's Moon Lake, Elaine OrrM * Ruth's Journey into the Fields: Feminism in Ozick's The Pagan Rabbi, Kathy Rugoff * Reconstructing the Native American Woman: Louise Erdrich's Fleur, Corinne H. Dale
About the author
Dale, Corinne H.
Summary
This collection of essays explores the intertwining social conditions of ethnicity and gender as they are represented in short stories by contemporary American women. The introduction to the collection explains the theoretical understanding of gender and ethnicity as social constructions that provide a context for individual experience. The collection brings together analyses of short stories that focus on major ethnic cultures in the United States: Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Japanese American, Asian American, African American, Jewish American, white Protestant American, and Native American. Each essay testifies to the struggles of women within patriarchal cultures in America, and each explores how different ethnic identities set the terms of these gender struggles. The essays also reveal the complications of other important social issues, such as class, sexual preference, and religion. Individually, each essay contributes a significant new analysis of a short story or collection by an important contemporary American writer. Together, the essays indicate the complexity and significance of this cultural approach to women's fiction, demonstrate the critical theories that are currently developing in the fields of gender and ethnic studies, and suggest that neither ethnicity nor gender can legitimately be considered alone.
