| Description |
xxix, 178 pages ; 22 cm |
| Contents |
Introduction / Ruth O. Saxton -- Where is she going, where are we going, at century's end : the girl as site of cultural conflict in Joyce Carol Oates's "The model" / Brenda Daly -- Self-possession, dolls, Beatlemania, loss : telling the girl's own story / Gina Hausknecht -- The battleground of the adolescent girl's body / Brenda Boudreau -- When the back door is closed and the front yard is dangerous : the space of girlhood in Toni Morrison's fiction / Deborah Cadman -- Dizzying possibilities, plots and endings : girlhood in Jill McCorkle's Ferris beach / Elinor Ann Walker -- "I ain't no FRIGGIN LITTLE WIMP" : the girl "I" narrator in contemporary fiction / Renee R. Curry -- Coming-of-age in the snare of history : Jamaica Kincaid's The autobiography of my mother / Diane Simmons -- Subversive storytelling : the construction of lesbian girlhood through fantasy and fairy tale in Jeanette Winterson's Oranges are not the only fruit / Isabel C. Anievas Gamallo -- But that was in another country : girlhood and the contemporary "coming to America" narrative / Rosemary Marangoly George |
| Summary |
The Girl investigates the legacies of expectation, competing cultural ideologies, and multiplicities of growing up female at the end of the twentieth century as portrayed in contemporary fictions by women, tackling the forces at work on both the fictional girls and the writers themselves. The first collection of critical essays to examine the portrayal of girls in contemporary women's fiction within the context of recent sociological and psychological analyses of girls, The Girl proposes that contemporary stories of girlhood constitute a new lens for literary and cultural study |
|
Examining the work of authors such as Toni Morrison, Jeanette Winterson, Jamaica Kincaid, and Joyce Carol Oates for their revelations and representations in regard to girlhood, these essays speak to, complement, and contest one another in a compelling interrogation of what it means to grow up female at the end of the millennium |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-164) and index |
| Subject |
American fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism
|
|
Girls in literature
|
|
Women and literature -- English-speaking countries -- History -- 20th century
|
|
English fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism
|
|
American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism
|
|
English fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism
|
| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
|
|
History.
|
| Author |
Saxton, Ruth
|
| LC no. |
98003849 |
| ISBN |
0312173539 |
|
9780312173531 |
|
0312225784 |
|
9780312225780 |
|
