From Library Journal
The 34 writers included in this impressive anthology originally published their fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and occasional writings during the settlement years of the American frontier. All of the women were professional authors at a time when women generally had difficulty finding publishers. Their abilities reinforced their physical isolation yet offered them outlets not available to most women and men. Miller, who lives in Arizona and has degrees in history, anthropology, and geology, has done a particularly fine job of finding voices that aren't often represented in frontier literatureDwomen of Native American, Hispanic, Chinese, and Anglo ethnicity are included. Each selection is preceded by a brief biographical and historical reference establishing context. Miller's admiration and respect for each author is evident. Recommended for women's studies, American studies, and frontier literature collections in academic and public libraries.DPam Kingsbury, Florence, AL
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
In this book are bits and pieces of dreams, lives, experiences, and vistas, like squares cut from old cloth and assembled into a crazy quilt of writing styles and forms. The patchwork design mirrors both the complexity of the chroniclers and the stark lines and angles of the American frontier. —Susan Cummins Miller, from the introduction In this anthology of thirty-four writers who published during the settlement years of the American frontier, Miller assembles nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and occasional writings from women of Anglo, Chinese, Hispanic, and Native American ethnicity. Variously addressing such themes as isolation, drudgery, friendship, mourning, and even mysticism, these writers offer up a different frontier, one that focuses on women’s experiences as much as men’s. In brief biographical and historical introductions to each writer, Miller shares insights and context as engaging as the selections themselves.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
