Listening to Silences New Essays in Feminist Criticism

by Hedges, Elaine; Fishkin, Shelley Fisher

• ISBN13: 9780195073072
• ISBN10: 019507307X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-10-20
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Thirty years ago, in a lecture at the Radcliffe Institute, Tillie Olsen first addressed the problem of silences in literature--paving the way for future explorations of the subject, including her landmark work, Silences . The subject of silences and silencing--as fact, as trope, as lens through which to understand literary history--has been central to feminist criticism ever since. In Listening to Silences , a group of distinguished feminist literary critics reevaluates Olsen's heritage to reassert, extend, redefine, and question her insights, and to probe the dynamics of silence and silencing as they operate today in literature, criticism, and the academy. The book traces for the first time the genealogy of an important American critical tradition, one that still influences contemporary debates about feminism, multiculturalism, and the literary canon. Contributors to Listening to Silences include Kate Adams, Norma Alarcon, Joanne Braxton, Sharon Zuber, King-Kok Cheung, Constance Coiner, Robin Dizard, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Diana Hume George, Elaine Hedges, Carla Kaplan, Patricia Laurence, Rebecca Mark, Diane Middlebrook, Carla L. Peterson, Lillian Robinson, Deborah Silverton Rosenfelt, Judith L. Sensibar, and Judith Bryant Wittenberg.

Author Biography

Elaine Hedges is Professor of English and Director of Women's Studies at Towson State University.
Shelley Fisher Fishkin is Professor of American Studies at the University of Texas, Austin.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 3
Circle of Women Artists: Tillie Olsen and Anne Sexton at the Radcliffe Institute	p. 17
Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic: The Lessons Silences Has Taught Us	p. 23
Rereading Tell Me a Riddle in the Age of Deconstruction	p. 49
"No One's Private Ground": A Bakhtinian Reading of Tillie Olsen's Tell Me a Riddle	p. 71
"Further Liftings of the Veil": Gender, Class, and Labor in Frances E. W. Harper's Iola Leroy	p. 97
Attentive Silence in Joy Kogawa's Obasan	p. 113
Northamerican Silences: History, Identity, and Witness in the Poetry of Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, and Leslie Marmon Silko	p. 130
Silences in Harriet "Linda Brent" Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl	p. 146
Women's Silence as a Ritual of Truth: A Study of Literary Expressions in Austen, Bronte and Woolf	p. 156
Reading Feminist Readings: Recuperative Reading and the Silent Heroine of Feminist Criticism	p. 168
Silent Parenting in the Academy	p. 197
"How Many of Us Can You Hold to Your Breast?": Mothering in the Academy	p. 225
Teaching from the Open Closet	p. 245
Cognitive Desires: An Allegory of/for Chicana Critics	p. 260
Silences in the In-Between: Feminist Women Critics and the Canon	p. 274
"The Great Unexamined": Silence, Speech, and Class	p. 287
Filling in the Silences: Tillie Olsen's Reading Lists	p. 295
Contributors	p. 311
Index	p. 315
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