American women take the essay form and make it their own in this excellent collection edited by Martin (English/Claremont Graduate School). She divides these pieces by well-known writers into categories that themselves reflect important truths about women's priorities and experiences: ``Generations: Essays on the Family,'' ``Breaking the Silence: Women Confront Oppression and Violence,'' ``Women's Bodies, Women's Choices,'' and so on. The individual essays deal with issues that touch many women— relationships, identity, and abuse—personal stories told with often startling candor. Nancy K. Miller's ``My Father's Penis'' breaks that holiest of taboos against women acknowledging their fathers' sexuality. Shana Penn, in ``Death of Popeye,'' tells of her sexual abuse by a male babysitter and the resulting loss of both innocence and her sense of control over her environment. And there is an anonymous first-person account, reprinted from Harper's, of a 20-year-old woman's rape. The authors do not pontificate, they share. The results are often more nonfiction short stories than what we generally think of as essays, and in this way American women writers have adapted the form to suit their own methods of exposition. There are examples of more traditional essay writing: Mary Gordon's ``A Moral Choice,'' for one, which dispassionately discusses the abortion issue. And Martin also stretches her definition of essay to include what is certainly the least traditional piece, ``I Just Came Out Pregnant''—the oral history of Felicita Garcia, a Puerto Rican woman who became pregnant at the age of 16. With hardly a discordant note in the group, beautifully wrought pieces from some of our finest contemporary American authors.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8070-6346-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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