Feminist engagements : forays into American literature and culture

This book offers historically-grounded, feminist interventions into American literary history by one of the country's leading scholars in American Studies. Integrating criticism, biography, social history, popular culture, and personal narrative Fishkin explores the poetry, fiction, nonfiction and drama of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century. These charismatic, readable essays range from explorations of feminist humor and chutzpah, to meditations on the personal and the political, to examinations of feminists' challenges to cultural paradigms. Fishkin s lively voice engages readers with the American past and leaves a bold stamp on the literary landscape.

• Introduction p. 1
• I Changing the Story
• The Borderlands of Culture p. 15
• Making a Change p. 33
• Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic p. 47
• Changing the Story p. 63
• Essentialism and Its Discontents p. 81
• II Men Reading and Writing Women/Women Reading and Writing Men
• Dreiser and the Discourse of Gender p. 91
• Mark Twain and Women p. 109
• An Interview with Maxine Hong Kingston p. 131
• The Bondwoman's Escape p. 139
• III Humor and Chutzpah
• Feminist Humor and Charlotte Perkins Gilman p. 149
• Theresa Malkiel's Diary of a Shirtwaist Striker p. 167
• Erica Jong p. 177
• Epilogue p. 203
• Notes p. 209
• Bibliography p. 235
• Acknowledgments p. 267
• Index p. 269