Multicultural Women in the US: Book Suggestions

What follows are suggestions for books that could be used in a course on
"Multicultural Women in the United States."  The suggestions were offered
on WMST-L in July 2005.  For additional WMST-L files now available on the
Web, see the WMST-L File Collection.

Hi all,

Once again I am seeking out your advice on the topic of women's studies
and literature, but with a different focus this time. As you may recall,
I'm not a lit person, so please excuse my limited knowledge on the range
of what's out there. :) I would like to find good fiction books for my
multicultural women in the US class, and I'd like to find one of each
for the ethnic groups we must include--Latina/Chicana, Black, Native
American, and Asian American. I'd like them to be relatively new books,
not too long or difficult to read (it's a 1000 level class), and
explicit about the effects of ethnicity/race/class/religion/etc. for the
women in the stories. So far I've thought of the following (I haven't
read all of these so I'd be happy to hear responses on my ideas):

Asian American:
My Year of Meats or Joy Luck Club

Latina/Chicana:
The Dirty Girls' Social Club or How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

I haven't found anything good yet for Native American women, and there
are actually so many books featuring Black women that I'm not sure
what's good and what isn't. Of course I know about authors like Toni
Morrison, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Ntozake Shange, Terry
McMillan, etc. But of those and the many others, I don't know what would
be a good choice for my needs. All suggestions (including young adult
books, which I've found are usually very good) are welcome!

Thanks,
Blaise

Dear Blaise and others,

Here is a useful website, called "Voices from the Gap," that features
women writers and artists of color:

http://voices.cla.umn.edu/

Hope this helps!

Janell Hobson
jhobson  AT  albany.edu

Here are some I've used successfully: Linda Hogan-Solar Storms (native
american),Sandra Cisneros--Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories
(Chicana). J. California Cooper--any of her short story
collections(African-American).

Virginia Bemis
Associate Professor/English
Ashland University
Ashland, OH 44805
419-289-5120
vbemis  AT  ashland.edu

I really like Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior
(Chinese-American) Jumpha Lahari's The Interpreter of
Maladies - Indian/British/American Anything by Sandra
Cisneros - especially the House on Mango Street For
native American, I have used Spiderwoman's Grand
Daughters, but it may be out of print now.  I would
also be interested in finding more current native
American lit.

Carol Blessing, Ph.D.
Professor of Literature and Women's Studies
Point Loma Nazarene University
San Diego, CA 92106

For Native American literature, I like _Mohawk Trail_ by Beth Brandt.
It's not a novel; rather, it's a collection of various genres bound
together by voice and conviction and content.  And it's not new, but
it's short, and I've used it with good success in 1000-level courses.

FWIW,
Julie


~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
Julie K. Daniels
English and Women's Studies
Century College
3300 Century Ave. N.
White Bear Lake, MN  55110
j.daniels  AT  century.edu

"Earth worms are so pleasant."     Zoe K. Daniels, at age 3

How about "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison (Black
American), Jessica Hagedorn's "The Gangster of Love"
(Asian American)?

Best,
Hope

Louise Erdrich's _Tracks_ is a Native American novel/short story cycle that I
have used w/ great success in Women's Studies courses.  Its protagonist, Fleur,
is one of the strongest characters in contemporary American lit (IMHO).

Karen Weekes
Asst. Prof., English & Women's Studies
Penn State Univ., Abington College
kew16  AT  psu.edu

Hi Blaise and all, My view is you can't beat Linda Hogan's _Power_ for
Native American lit.  Dedicated to the Florida panther, Hogan's book
explores what it means to be part of two distinct and conflicting cultures
and challenges us to think about our own assumptions about identity, the
earth, environmentalism, etc.  Hogan's book forwards one Native American
viewpont about the relationship between humans and nature.  My students LOVE
_Power_ even though it is a difficult book in terms of language.  I'm happy
to send my teaching aids, and I want to add that this book helped students
to understand that there were valid viewpoints other than their own.  I use
this as the first novel in a semester for Women's Lit of Social Justice.

Lisa Logan 

I would recommend Mother to Mother by Sindiwe Magona and Our Sister Killjoy 
by Ama Ata Aidoo (African American/Black); and Lost Daughter of Happiness by 
Geiling Yan and The Pagoda by Patricia Powell (Asian American).

Best,

Christine Dilkes

If you are interested in including literature by and about women with
disabilities, consistent with the view of the disability experience as a
culture and hence as an aspect of multiculturalism, let me know and I will
send you some recommendations. Cordially, Harilyn Rousso

Harilyn Rousso, LCSW
Executive Director
Disabilities Unlimited
3 East 10th Street--4B
New York, NY 10003-5916
hrousso  AT  nyc.rr.com

I would recommend Lan Cao, Monkey Bridge (Vietnamese American), LeAnne
Howe, Shell Shaker (Choctaw), Achy Obejas, Memory Mambo (Cuban
American), and if you are interested in looking at Carribean American
lit anything by Edwidge Danticat (Haitian American) and Michelle Cliff
(Jamaician American).  I just taught Monkey Bridge with Danticat's The
Dew Breaker and they worked well together to discuss memory, violence,
gender, and immigration.

Best, Beth

Elizabeth Currans, Ph.D. Candidate
Dept. of Religious Studies and Women's Studies Program
University of California, Santa Barbara
myrtyl  AT  juno.com

Dear Blaise and others:

I second Erdrich's _Tracks_ for Native American. Other writers you
might check out include: Beth Brant (already mentioned) Joy Harjo
(more poetry I think, but sometimes a couple of poems can work
wonders)


For Asian American: I prefer Kingston's _Woman Warrior_ to Tan's _Joy
Luck Club_ because it's simply a better and more complex book.  Both
are kindof old now.  You might have a look at Nora Okja Keller's
_Comfort Woman_ to see if you think your group can handle it--it deals
in part with the experiences of a Korean woman who is a "comfort
woman" or forced-prostitute/sexual slave to the Japanese army during
the occupation of Korea.  It's like _Joy Luck Club_ a mother-daughter
story, but doesn't fall into the trap of inviting an equation between
the yuppy problems of Californian asian american daughters and their
mother's experiences in China.

There's really lots and lots of good work out there-- I'm a little out
of date now, but it's worth thinking about what particular group of
asian americans you're interested in-- Chinese, Japanese (including
work dealing w/the internment camps in WWII), Vietnamese (here I can't
name much besides Lely Hayslip's _When Heaven and Earth Changed
Places_, but I bet others can.  This is a group with particularly low
access to higher education & institutional power, so a different
perspective again.  If you're interested in South Asian (someone
mentioned Lahiri), I like B. Mukerjee too-- there's _Wife_ and I've
forgotten some other titles.

African American is very very rich indeed.  Besides Alice Walker, Toni
Morrison (my personal favorite is _Sula_), Grace Paley, Ntosake
Shange, if you want Caribbean there's Opal Palmer Adisa, and on and
on. Personally I'd avoid McMillan (again the yuppy issue-- the
suffering of very wealthy women seeking good relationships bores me),
but you know your audience, and at least it gets away from the "all
women of color are poor and urban."  I've found Alice Walker's short
stories can really work well for students first grappling w/ideas--
esp. the ones in _In Love and Trouble_.  Partly because Walker's
stories are didactic-- they try to teach something.  I really like the
one (can't remember title just now) about the woman blues singer who's
paid by a white musician (Elvis-figure) for her tunes... It's funny &
poignant without being sappy or too self-sacrificing, but does teach
an important lesson about appropriation that's based in historical
truth.

I'm sure there are some really good syllabi on the web on each of the
ethnic/racial groups you mention & you could cull a really good
reading list together.  I have found Gloria Anzaldua's collection
_Haciendo Caras/Making Face, Making Soul_ goes over very well.  It
combines some fiction and poetry with lots of quite readable essays.
The range of representation is very good, and some of the fiction by
writers both famous and less known at the time are really useful (on
colorism among African Americans, on the fetishization of Asian women,
on the tensions of being bilingual or of being Latina and NOT
bilingual, and so on).  Haven't read the newer collection (This Bridge
Called Home) yet, but am planning on using that myself this year.

Good luck,
Miriam Wallace
New College of Florida
mwallace  AT  ncf.edu

The Walker story Miriam is referring to below is "1955" and she's
right--it is wonderful.  I teach it often!

I recommend also Naylor's Women of Brewster Place.  Students respond
extremely well to the moving stories.

Bonnie Nelson
Kansas State University
English Dept.

On Sun, 10 Jul 2005, Wallace, Miriam wrote:

>  I've found Alice Walker's short
>stories can really work well for students first grappling w/ideas--
>esp. the ones in _In Love and Trouble_.  Partly because Walker's
>stories are didactic-- they try to teach something.  I really like
>the one (can't remember title just now) about the woman blues singer
>who's paid by a white musician (Elvis-figure) for her tunes... It's
>funny & poignant without being sappy or too self-sacrificing, but
>does teach an important lesson about appropriation that's based in
>historical truth.
>===========================================================================