my library was dukedom enough

[lotesse]

Well, it's taken me a while, but I've finally found Elaine Showalter. How did I miss this frood?! She's pretty hoopy. A little kink-shy, a little essentialist, but no more so than any 80s-early 90s white feminist criticism.

Old-school girl-style academic crit, Victorianist edition. Just finished Sexual Anarchy, and I'mma have to go back to the library for more soonish here. When I get through the rest of my reading.

I was thinking, a couple days ago, how when I was a little girl I never had enough to read. My life was a perpetual quest for text: libraries, book lists, curricula, reading programs. There was never enough to last as long as I needed it to. How I wish that I could somehow outsource some of my current stacks to that little girl - she would've liked them more than I do! Always feast or famine, I suppose.

Comments

[amelia-petkova.livejournal.com]

Have you gotten your hands on A Jury of Her Peers yet? It came out last year: a collection of information on American women writers from the 1600s through the 21st century, both famous and obscure. I would have taken out my library's copy by now but I have enough other library books to get through first. Definitely check it out.

[lotesse]

Nooo, but it sounds amazing! I'm hiding from Colonials right now, but I'm mentally poking at a course on gender in American early modernity for next fall, so maybe I'll come back across the pond then. Thanks for the rec!

[amelia-petkova.livejournal.com]

Oh jeez, I just remembered a story for you: You know Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe? In one of my undergrad English classes we were reading 19th-century American lit and we read excerpts of it. We had to do group projects and choose a writer from the time period to present on. Some other girls did Stowe and in their presentation...they claimed she was black. *headdesk* It took me a minute to process that and think, "Wait a minute..." before I could object.

[lotesse]

homg whaaa?

I weep for the world sometimes, for srs. Just. No. Please tell me the prof slapped it down?

[amelia-petkova.livejournal.com]

I can't remember if the prof noticed initially! It wasn't something they made a big deal out of in their presentation, but something they mentioned in passing. I said something like,

"Um, excuse me, I'm pretty sure Stowe was white."

Group: "Really? No, we think she was African-American."

"Look, I'll get a picture and show you."

(I think my group's presentation was on Emily Dickinson. That was much easier!)

[lotesse]

ahaha no.

[slashfairy]

oh, yes, i remember that problem as a child, and how i wished for her to come help me do my reading the last few years of uni.

[lotesse]

Inorite? Seriously - I do truly regret the time that I wasted as a child. I was ready and hungry for so much more than I was given; if I'd had those year to truly work in, I feel like maybe I wouldn't feel so scrambled now. Tho there prolly isn't really a way to not feel scrambled by grad school!

[anthimeria]

Too much to read is a good problem to have, at the end of the day. ;)

[lotesse]

Not if your days never end!!