Here are a few more responses to the query on Southern women writers, including a summation and reposting of a reading assembled from the first round of postings. I think we all really appreciate it when we hear back from people with a synthesis or followup of responses. RB
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From: IN%"asalas@adrian.adrian.edu"
Subj: RE: SYL: Southern Women Writers (responses)
How about Anne Tyler?
Angela M. Salas
Adrian College
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From: IN%"lieber@storm.simpson.edu"
Subj: RE: SYL: Southern Women Writers (responses)
A writer I've had a lot of success teaching is Ellen Glasgow. Barren Ground is a wonderful, if somewhat sombre, agrarian and, for Glasgow, feminist novel. This semester I taught The Romantic Comedians, which provides a nice view of the mood of the twenties and the contrast of pre-war and postwar generations, and the origins of modernism. *********************
Professor Todd Lieber
Department of English
Simpson College
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From: IN%"Paul.Lauter@mail.trincoll.edu"
Subj: RE: SYL: Southern Women Writers (responses)
It's worth thinking about whether one wants to do any of the ante-bellum, essentially racist novels like THE PLANTER'S NORTHERN BRIDE (of which there's an excerpt in the Heath). I have mixed feelings myself, but there's an argument to be made that it's helpful for students to see what a writer like Harper is writing IN to.
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From: IN%"titus@stolaf.edu"
Subj: southern women writers
I want to thank the many people who sent me helpful suggestions for a Southern Women Writers class. Below is a list compiled from their messages and below that the texts I chose for my course--a four week intensive interim class for first year students. Mary Titus, St. Olaf College
"...of course Welty, O'Connor, Porter..."
Growing up in the South (anthology, Signet)
Signet Classic Book of Southern Short Stories
Weaks and Perry, eds. Southern Women Writers: Colonial to Contemporary Suzie Mee, ed. Downhome: Southern Women Writers
Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Tina McElroy Ansa, Baby of the Family
Doris Betts, Souls Raised from the Dead
Blanche Boyd, The Revolution of Little Girls
Maureen Brady, Folly
Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle
Olive Burns, Cold Sassy Tree
Alice Childress (playwright, novelist)
Kate Chopin
Ellen Douglas, Can't Quit You Baby
Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes...
Kaye Gibbons, Charms for the Easy Life
Shirley Ann Grau
Melissa Faye Greene, Praying for Sheetrock
Doris Grumbach
Frances Ellen Harper (poet, novelist, lecturer)
Josephine Humphreys
Zora Neale Hurston, Dust tracks on the Road
Florence King, Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady
Pinkie Gordon Lane (poet)
Bobbie Ann Mason, Spence and Lila
Shelley Fraser Mickle
Minnie Bruce Pratt (poet, essayist)
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Dori Sanders
Mary Lee Settle
Lee Smith, Fair and Tender Ladies; Me and My Baby View the Eclipse (stories) Elizabeth Spencer, The Voice at the Back Door
Lillian Smith, Killers of the Dream
E.D.E.N. Southworth, The Hidden Hand
Margaret Walker (poet, novelist)
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Southern Women Writers--January term 1997
"Southern women" from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture film/video: Gone With the Wind; Ethnic Notions
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Kate Chopin, The Awakening; "Desiree's Baby"
brief selections from Gerda Lerner's Black Women in White America Katherine Anne Porter, The Old Order: Stories of the South Lillian Hellman, 'The Children's Hour"; "The Little Foxes" Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Stories essays by Alice Walker, Lillian Smith, Minnie Bruce Pratt
Alice Walker, Meridian
Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina
Suzie Mee, ed. Downhome: An Anthology of Southern Women Writers