Winner of the 2009 Feminist and Women's Studies Association Book
Prize
"Do you think I can be a feminist mother? Did I make you and
your kisses up in my mind? Will you join our military protest at
the gate? Will you feed the kids when I'm in prison? Are you able
to forgive me for breaking off this correspondence because you are
a man?"
During the women's movement of the 1970s and 1980s, feminists in
the United States and Britain reinvented the image of the woman
letter writer. Symbolically tearing up the love letter to an absent
man, they wrote passionate letters to one another, exploring
questions of sexuality, separatism, and strategy. These texts speak
of the new interest women began to feel in one another and the new
demands--and disappointments--these relationships would create.
Margaretta Jolly provides the first cultural study of these
letters, charting the evolution of feminist political consciousness
from the height of the women's movement to today's e-mail networks.
Jolly uncovers the passionate, contradictory emotions of both
politics and letter writing and sets out the theory behind them as
a fragile yet persistent ideal of care ethics, women's love, and
epistolary art. She follows several compelling feminist
relationships sustained through writing and confronts the mixed
messages of the "open letter," which complicated political
relations between women (such as Audre Lorde's "Open Letter to Mary
Daly," which called out white feminists for their implicit
racism).
Jolly recovers the unsung literature of lesbianism and feminist
romance, examines the ambivalent feelings within mother-daughter
correspondences, and considers letter-writing campaigns during the
peace movement. She concludes with a discussion of the ethical
dilemma surrounding care versus autonomy and the meaning behind the
burning or saving of letters. Letters that chart love stories,
letters stowed away in attics, letters burnt at the end of
romances, bittersweet letters written but never sent... this
fascinating glimpse into women's intimate archives illuminates one
of feminism's central concerns--that all relationships are
political--and uniquely recasts a social movement in very emotional
terms.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!