The Intimate Critique

Diane P. Freedman, Assistant Professor of English at University of New Hampshire, is the author of An Alchemy of Genres: Cross-Genre Writing by American Women Poet Critics.

"Grouped together, these very different essays raise and respond to a question that feminist theorists continue to ask--about the extent to which individual experience and self-expression may be read as representative."--Rachel M. Brownstein, author of "Becoming a Heroine: Reading About Women in Novels"

Acknowledgments viiIntroduction / Diane P. Freedman, Olivia Frey, and Francis Murphy Zauhar 1Part 1. Muse-ings on Genre, Autobiography, Narrative: Formative StrategiesBorder Crossing as Method and Motif in Contemporary American Writing, or, How Freud Helped Me Case the Joint / Diane P. Freedman 13Me and My Shadow / Jane Tompkins 23Beyond Literary Darwinism: Women's Voices and Critical Discourse / Olivia Frey 41"Everyday Life": My Sojourn at Parchman Farm / Cheryl B. Torsney 67Excerpts from Letters to Friends / Susan Koppelman 75Social Circles: Being a Report on J. Hills Miller's Campus Visitation / Linda R. Robertson 81Touchstones and Bedrocks: Learning the Stories We Need / Victoria Ekanger 93Part II. Critical ConfessionsCreative Voices: Women Reading and Women's Writing / Frances Murphy Zauhar 103Breaking Silence: The Woman Warrior / Shirley Nelson Garner 117Different Silences / Traise Yamamoto 127"What's in a Name?": Some Meanings of Blackness / Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 135Poetry and the Age: "A Girl in a Library" to Randall Jarrell / Sandra M. Brown 151My Friend, Joyce Carol Oates / Brenda Daly 163Somebody Must Say These Things: An Essay for My Mother / Melody Graulich 175The Scarlet Brewer and the Voice of the Colonized / Shirley Geok-lin Lim 191Dividing Fences / Carol S. Taylor 197What Do Women Really Mean? Thoughts on Women's Diaries and Lives / Suzanne Bunkers 207Part III. Autobiographical Literary CriticismBetween the Medusa and the Abyss: Reading Jane Eyre, Reading Myself / Ellen Brown 225Rereading Middlemarch, Rereading Myself / Peter Carlton 237The Crippling of the Third World: Shiva Naipaul's Heritage / Rosanne Kanhai-Brunton 225Penelope's Web / Gail Griffin 255"Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around!": Reading the Narrative of Frederick Douglass / Dolan Hubbard 265Catharine Trotter Cockburn and Me: A Duography / Kendall 273In Between Abject and Object: The Mourning Sickness of the Expectant Mother, or, Three Movements of the Blues in B Minor / Dana Beckelman 283La Ronde of Children and Mothers / Julia Balen 293Selected Bibliography 303Contributors 309