collections

My paper is now due Friday but I hope to turn it in long before that deadline. I hope to be able to catch up on some reading (and other writing) once it’s turned in. This past week I indulged in a short collection of wonderful, mind warping, delightful essays:

Filter House
by Nisi Shawl

The fourteen essays short stories* in Shawl’s Filter House draw you in with a deep and swirling magic. Each essay is unique and makes for wonderful short reading sessions as one does not need to read them in linear order to make sense of them. A very enjoyable read.

I’ve read as much of these as I’m going to, so I’ll throw ’em in here for fun:

Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader
edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson

This comprehensive collection into women’s autobiography should not be missed. The lengthy (52 page, 2 column) introduction lays out the history, the theories, and the future of the field. The essays within fall into eight parts from agency to subjectivities and memories and sexualities. Essayists range from Margo Culley (editor of A Day at a Time) and Helen Buss (New Historicism, also editor of Working in Women’s Archives) and Assia Djebar (author of Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade) to Judith Butler (Excitable Speech and Bodies That Matter). I am not a scholar of women’s studies so my knowledge of this topic is limited and basic (the authors listed are the names I recognized), but the words within this Reader are accessible even to me. It’s a large book, but entirely worthy of the shelf space.

Inscribing the Daily: Critical Essays on Women’s Diaries
edited by Suzanne L. Bunkers and Cynthia Anne Huff

IN THE PRESENCE OF AUDIENCE: SELF IN DIARIES AND FICTION
by Deborah Martinson

* edited with many thanks to Brian who noticed my big embarrassing word slippage. *blush*

• Category: books