Writing Women's Communities : The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary Multi-Genre Anthologies

Beginning in the 1980s, a number of popular and influential anthologies organized around themes of shared identity— Nice Jewish Girls , This Bridge Called My Back , Home Girls , and others—have brought together women's fiction and poetry with journal entries, personal narratives, and transcribed conversations. These groundbreaking multi-genre anthologies, Cynthia G. Franklin demonstrates, have played a crucial role in shaping current literary studies, in defining cultural and political movements, and in building connections between academic and other communities. Exploring intersections and alliances across the often competing categories of race, class, gender, and sexuality, Writing Women's Communities contributes to current public debates about multiculturalism, feminism, identity politics, the academy as a site of political activism, and the relationship between literature and politics. Exploring intersections and alliances across the often competing categories of race, class, gender, and sexuality, Writing Women's Communities contributes to current public debates about multiculturalism, feminism, identity politics, the academy as a site of political activism, and the relationship between literature and politics. Franklin points out that the anthology form breaks down distinctions between the "literary" and the "extra-literary" by including many genres. Noting the increasing movement of women of color into the academy in the 1980s and 1990s, she shows that the anthology provides a forum that enables the editors - often women working within universities - to reach and remain part of multiple communities. Frontmatter Acknowledgments (page ix) 1. Introduction: Writing across Communities (page 3) 2. Another 1981: From This Bridge Called My Back to Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras (page 31) 3. Coming Out and Staying Home: Nice Jewish Girls and Home Girls (page 56) 4. The Making and Unmaking of Asian American Identity: Making Waves and The Forbidden Stitch (page 81) 5. (Un)Common Class Identities in the United States and Britain: Calling Home and The Common Thread (page 110) 6. Around 1996: Re-Placing Identity Politics from the "Racial Paradise" of Hawai'i (page 155) Notes (page 203) Works Cited (page 242) Index (page 256)