Shifting the Ground: American Women Writers' Revisions of Nature, Gender, and Race

by Rachel Stein

Ecofeminist critic Stein (English, Siena College) examines how four diverse women authors Emily Dickinson, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Leslie Marmo Silko counter the conquest- oriented American mythos with their alternative vision of egalitarian interplay between nature, gender, and race. Each struggles for empowerment against an oppressive Victorian Puritanism for Dickinson ( Nature is a Haunted House ), African-American slavery for Hurston ( Tell My Horse ) and Walker ( Meridian ), and Native Americans' displacement by white settlers for Silko ( Ceremony ). Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Genres: Nonfiction

183 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1997