University of Virginia Press

Cotton’s Queer Relations: Same-Sex Intimacy and the Literature of the Southern Plantation, 1936-1968

admin — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

As Michael Bibler mentions in the introduction to Cotton’s Queer Relations, it seems impossible that there could be enough material out there to serve as the basis for such depth of criticism on an incredibly narrow topic. There are a few notable classics that have homoerotic undertones and even some more overt mentions of homosexual encounters that are discussed in works like The Confessions of Nat Turner, but these queer moments seem like blips in what appears to be an otherwise overtly heterosexual literary scape. Is Bibler reading too much into plantation literature? Are his examples only the result of the passionate desire to find queer meaning in texts where none exists? The answer to both questions seems to be no.

Bibler’s arguments are focused and supported with strong evidence from the texts and the work of other critics. But the argument by Bibler is more complex than a simple acknowledgment of the existence of queerness in plantation literature; he argues that the queer subtexts in plantation literature expose wider social injustices in plantation life, and that queer relations also move racial inequality and sexism to the forefront.

Bibler wants to make it clear that same-sex relations here do not necessarily mean homosexual relations. I will allow the reader of Cotton’s Queer Relations to delve more deeply into the complex reasoning behind his assertion; but in a nutshell, he essentially pleads that the closeness of same-sex relations in the textual examples he uses stand in such conflict of the heterosexualized and paternalistic structure of the plantation that they can be defined as queer even if they are not directly homosexual. It is an interesting take, and one that may initially sound like a bit of a stretch.

Terminology notwithstanding, Bibler offers fresh readings of literary classics like Absalom, Absalom! and gives contemporary insight to controversial texts like Styron’s Nat Turner. He digs deep into Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and is able to juxtapose Big Daddy’s simultaneous tolerance of homosexuality with his unabashed lack of respect toward the black servants he employs, effectively layering new meaning on a well-worn text. He picks apart the relationships of white women and their black servants in the works of Lillian Hellman, Katherine Anne Porter, and Margaret Walker, describing them as “romances”—and supports his logic—even though none of the women in the stories share an erotic lesbian moment, or even a kiss. While there are a few minor stretches here and there in Bibler’s text, he overall pleads his case. He certainly does not appear to be afraid of stirring controversy, and does a remarkable job of defending his arguments while he discusses each point.

Written by: Emily S. Dunster, July 16th 2010

Unbounded Practice: Women and Landscape Architecture in the Early Twentieth Century

admin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 16:02:00 +0000

By Thaisa Way

University of Virginia Press

Female hands are all over America's landscape; you just need to know where to look for them. In Unbounded Practice, author Thaisa Way can direct your eye.

Look to the Memorial Quadrangle at Yale, the grounds of Princeton, or a number of botanical gardens and astronomical observatories to see the legacy of Beatrix Jones Farrand (1872-1959). Recall a youthful American pilgrimage to Disneyland—if you are among the number who has made one—to know the work of Ruth Shellhorn (1909-2005). Stroll past any working or middle-class apartment complex designed with a central, neatly-gardened courtyard to see the lasting influence of Marjorie Sewell Cautley (1891-1954), who designed such courtyards with the needs of family members—particularly mothers—in mind; not only can natural beauty be observed from every dwelling, but so can children at play.

Way's concern in Unbounded Practice is not just that significant contributions to landscape architecture have been made by women, but that these contributions have been largely forgotten by current practitioners and require a restorative historical account. An irony that emerges in Way's recounting of women's contribution to the formation of the discipline—critical in its early stages—is that the public conceptions of womanhood were both an inlet for women to practice the discipline and an impetus for them to be disassociated from it. At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, pursuits associated with horticulture, such as gardening and botany, were considered appropriate for the sex viewed as intrinsically closer to the earth than its masculine counterpart. This allowed women to enter the discipline with minimal, or no public rebuke, pursuing architectural approaches to design as well as employing acquired botanical knowledge often superior to that of their male peers. As landscape architecture moved towards an alignment with architecture at the expense of being associated with the "craft" of gardening, women were marginalized in the discipline.

Way's history is both a history of women and a history of the formation of a discipline—the key of the book's strength—and her passion as a scholar is evident in the pains she takes in detailing both. A lay reader, or perhaps even a beginning student, may benefit from reading Way's conclusion before embarking on the book proper. There, Way's passion is evident in tone as well as content, and the relatively brief reflection on a hefty scholarly endeavor reads as an accessible orientation to the modern challenges the discipline has faced.

Ten color plates are featured in the book, as well as a wealth of illuminating photographs of work by women pioneering practitioners, slides from lectures delivered by women, period advertisements, and—thrillingly—meticulous plans and client sketches drafted by the women Way profiles. While Unbounded Practice could easily be sourced for perspective on American history, women's history, class structure, ecology, urban studies, fine arts, architecture, and education, one can't help but imagine Way writing this book thinking of the reader who would crack the spine at one such architectural-botanical plan, magnifying glass in hand, connecting back to one of the women who would draft herself a practice.

Written by: Kaja Katamay, July 9th 2010

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem

admin — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:04:00 +0000

By Maryse Condé

University of Virginia Press

This fascinating novel, which won France's Grand Prix Littéraire de la Femme, offers readers a vivid re-imagining of the life of a historical figure mentioned only briefly in the transcripts of the seventeenth-century Salem witch trials: a slave woman of Caribbean origins, accused of practicing voodoo. Angela Davis, in her foreword to the current edition, asserts the importance of “the retelling of a history that is as much mine as it is hers,” a story of great significance to Black women who are “Tituba's cultural kin.” The first person narrative gives Tituba an opportunity to recount her life as she sees it, to overcome the silence imposed on her by official histories of the period. Maryse Condé, herself born in Guadeloupe, begins by evoking the beauties and horrors of the West Indies—of Barbados in particular—where Tituba is born to an Ashanti woman “as lithe and purple as the sugarcane flower,” who had been raped by a British sailor. Little Tituba flourishes at first in her island home, but her mother comes into conflict with their master and is hanged for striking a white man. At the age of seven, Tituba is taken in by old Mama Yaya and raised in the traditional healing ways inherited from African ancestors. The growing girl learns to respect everything in nature, to make the proper prayers and sacrifices, to devise “potions whose powers I strengthened with incantations,” and to communicate with the spirits, including her deceased mother.

The idyll in the wilderness ends abruptly when the adolescent Tituba falls in love with a merry rascal, a slave named John Indian. She soon moves to the capital, Bridgetown to be with him. John Indian jokingly calls her a witch, because of her special magical gifts, but others suspect her of commerce with the devil even though, as she protests, “Before setting foot inside this house I didn't know who Satan was!” In an interview published in the afterword to the present edition, Maryse Condé describes Tituba as “doing only good to her community” through her relations with “the invisible forces,” and therefore not a witch in the bad connotations of the term, but the bigoted people with whom she comes in contact—especially after she is sold along with John Indian to a Puritan minister, Samuel Parris—do not see her in a positive light.

One of the themes of the book is the unlikely (and, unfortunately, often temporary) alliances that can form between persons divided by race, class, or religion. When Parris moves with his household to Boston, a strong friendship develops between Tituba and Elizabeth Parris, the minister's wife, as well as with her child Betsey, It is one of the ironies of the novel that Tituba's efforts to amuse and aid the girls in her charge at Salem Village arouse the villagers' fears and turn them against her. The Caribbean folktales she tells about sorcerers and vampires titillate everyone and feed their fears of damnation and demonic possession. When Betsey tells her cousin Abigail about the secret magic rites Tituba has used to protect the frail little girl, the situation gets out of control. Condé locates the ultimate source of the hysteria that sweeps through the village as a combination of the repression of healthy sensual pleasures along with the accumulation of small-town jealousies and resentments among the populace, together with unacknowledged guilt at the mistreatment of Blacks and American Indians by the white settlers. The village girls accuse many local figures of magically tormenting them.

Arrested and interrogated in 1692, Tituba at first protests her innocence: she has done no wrong, has not hurt any of the afflicted children. Her husband John Indian advises her to play along with her accusers, to tell them what they want to hear. He even pretends to be possessed, himself. In a controversial sequence criticized by many reviewers, the novel's heroine encounters a character called Hester in prison, clearly based on the wholly fictional heroine of The Scarlet Letter. Certain historians have condemned this intrusion of Romantic literature into a historical novel, yet Condé in her interview defends it on two different grounds: a) that her work “is the opposite of a historical novel,” that her Tituba is an invented “female hero, ... a mock-epic character,” and b) that as a novelist, she felt “there was a link between Tituba and Nathaniel Hawthorne,” persons inhabiting the same region at times not too far apart for comparison. The conversation between the two prisoners gives Condé a chance to explore the social constraints on women and the difficult relations between men and women. Ann Armstrong Scarboro's afterword asserts that here Condé “parodies modern feminist discourse,” but it seems to me that Condé gets to play both sides against the middle in these passages by intermixing humorous and serious notes and leaving it up to the reader to decide how to interpret them.

While Tituba's testimony at trial is quoted from actual transcripts, the additional context Condé provides suggests that the accused woman is merely mouthing words that others are saying, going along with other people's superstitions. As a confessed witch she is sentenced to jail but escapes the death penalty. Thus she survives, while many of the people condemned for witchcraft are executed. The historical note to this edition of the novel states that in 1693 the slave Tituba was sold to pay her prison fees and the price of her chains. It is unclear what happened thereafter to the historical woman, but Condé chooses to have her Tituba purchased by Benjamin Cohen d'Azevedo, a Portuguese Jewish merchant whose wife had died. Benjamin and Tituba slowly become friends and eventually lovers. After a terrible house fire set by Puritan persecutors in which Benjamin's children are killed, he frees her and buys a ship passage back to Barbados for her. There she becomes involved with a group of maroons—wild Blacks who seem to be working towards freedom for the plantation slaves—but even there she finds betrayal and a revolt that fails. She is finally hanged by the British authorities. The epilogue finds the spirit of Tituba still active in the island, heroine of a popular song going about encouraging the slaves to fight for liberty.

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem is a work I highly recommend to people interested in African-American and Caribbean literature, colonialism and post-colonialism, post-modernism and feminism, as well as to any reader interested in a colorful adventure tale. The additional scholarly materials provided in this edition make this book helpful even to readers familiar with the original French text.

Written by: Kittye Delle Robbins-Herring, June 20th 2010

Acts of Narrative Resistance: Women's Autobiographical Writings in the Americas

admin — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Laura J. Beard

University of Virginia Press

Laura Beard’s study of women’s autobiography in its many forms, Acts of Narrative Resistance, is quite unique. There has to my knowledge never been a thorough single author study written which connected and compared such a variety of autobiographical texts from the Americas in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. Beard’s study focuses on women’s autobiography in Argentina, Brazil, and what she calls Indigenous Canada (some would argue that the term “Indigenous” in her appellation is superfluous, but we won’t get into that thorny discussion).

Many studies have been published on these genres in those individual countries, studies which have also pointed out some of the central themes brought forth by Beard concerning the difficulties and challenges associated with studying autobiography and its associated forms. All these topics are well summed up by Beard in her analysis, in which she identifies these narratives “as autobiographical fiction, fictional autobiography, autobiographical novels, semi-autobiographical novels, memoirs, and testimonios.” “Testimonial writings,” as they are called in Spanish, are essential to any study of autobiography in the Americas and quite hotly debated. Many questions are implicit in the study of the testimonio: authorship (who wrote the book?), veracity (did that person tell a truthful story?), and a (sometimes questionable) literary value (can this story be considered literature and/or women’s writing?).

The first two parts of Beard’s study involve cross-cultural analysis. All four authors written about in the first two parts are well known in the Latin American “feminist” canon. Part 1 examines the writing of Helena Parente Cunha of Brazil and Argentina’s Luisa Futoransky. In Part 2, Beard discusses Ana María Shúa of Argentina and Nélida Piñon of Brazil. Parente Cunha was translated and published in English in 1989 by the University of Texas Press while Piñon was published in English only ten years later. While Shúa was published in translation in 1998, Futoransky has only had two translations published in English. All four authors are widely studied by academics worldwide. Part 3 is entirely consecrated to the indigenous writers of Canada, Lee Maracle and Shirley Sterling. Although recognized in Canada and examined in recent texts focused on indigenous literature, these native women are still much less studied than the four other women in Beard's book.

Beard’s analytical concept of “Narrative Resistance” is not new, since one of the founding principles of feminist criticism is to examine (all) women’s narratives as new and separate voices in a literary world long dominated by patriarchal tradition. However, Beard coins a neologism to define the works of these six women: natiobiography, defined as the works of women “presenting the (fictionalized) histories of their families as the histories of their nations.”

Perhaps one of the limitations of the study is that Beard did not attempt to draw more explicit parallels between the writing of the indigenous Canadian women and that of the South American writers; the indigenous women, Maracle and Sterling, are once again somewhat marginalized from the main comparisons, quite exceptional, perhaps, when likened to their mostly “white middle-class” counterparts. Although Parente Cunha claims possible African ancestry, Shua Shúa and Futoransky are of Jewish origin while Piñon is of Galician extraction. Indigenous women are once again the doubly-colonized as opposed to the other women writers examined, in most cases “colonizers of,” or immigrants to, the American continent.

Nevertheless, Beard’s study, well structured and meticulously explained, is obligatory reading for those interested in or working on (the concept of) autobiography. It is well-written and highly readable and demonstrates the significance of telling stories for women.

Written by: Sophie M. Lavoie, March 26th 2010

Lessons in Integration: Realizing the Promise of Racial Diversity in American Schools

admin — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 17:19:00 +0000

By Erica Frankenberg and Gary Orfeld

University of Virginia Press

This dense volume brings together a wealth of scholarly essays that address the topic of integration in American schools in the early twenty-first century. The book is the fruit of a collaborative research roundtable convened by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Harvard University in 2004.

2004 was also the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka that led to the end of legal segregation in American schools. However, fifty years after Brown the authors of these essays look deeply into what is working, what is not working, and what has been forgotten since the desegregating schools was a serious project. Many of the essays put the focus squarely on the damage wrought by President Bush’s education agenda and No Child Left Behind, particularly the lack of bilingual education and the focus on high stakes testing.

Written by a range of researchers from developmental psychologists to education professors the essays in Lessons in Integration provide a range of scholarship that supports education policy makers and practitioners who are advocating for strategies that value students cultural backgrounds and make schools and classrooms welcoming, safe learning environments for all. Many of the chapters, with their charts, graphs, and formulas, may be overly scientific and dry for the casual reader, but this book will be a valuable resource for those in education studies.

Two of the most compelling essays break out of the scientific style employed by the other authors and focus on case studies. "Desperate to Learn: The Schooling Experience of Latinas in North Carolina" by Maria Teresa Unger Palmer documents the mismatch between secondary schools structure and the needs and expectations of immigrant students. It does so by documenting the experiences of thirteen Latina students over the course of several years. The students’ voices in Palmer’s piece remind readers what the authors of the book aim to do: better serve students from a range of backgrounds and provide quality education for all.

"Preparing Teachers for Multiracial and Underserved Schools" by Christine E. Sleeter focuses on the need to train a more diverse group of teachers and teachers who are prepared for the challenges for the multicultural classroom. She argues that novice teachers must be in training programs that are diverse and that these programs should admit students that want to pursue cross-cultural learning experiences, have maturity to fully consider their students backgrounds and learn from them, and possess academic ability.

Taken together, this volume provides a framework for educators, administrators and researchers to take leadership roles in ensuring that American schools live up to the promise of high-quality, accessible education for all. While much lip-service has been paid to the multicultural vision of America perhaps best represented by the election of President Barack Obama, Lessons in Integration provides strong research of what schools and educators must do to actively serve and support America’s diversity.

Written by: Eleanor Whitney, April 11th 2009

Art + Revolution: The Life and Death of Thami Mnyele, South African Artist

admin — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:00:00 +0000

By Diana Wylie

University of Virginia Press

It should be of no surprise that some of the most peaceful and timid visionaries have met violent deaths. It seems that the power with which they create, forge, or even love is equal to that which opposes their very existence. Diana Wylie captures one such figure with Art + Revolution.

With the many changes that have taken place in the United States in the past few years, it would be easy and even relieving for some to forget the far-reaching struggles that helped to bring those changes about. Wylie's self-acknowledged humility realized through the stark differences between her and Mnyele's plight gives the reader a chance to put an artistic and sensitive face to the struggle against South African apartheid.

Perhaps Thami Mnyele’s birthplace of Alexandra Township in Johannesburg, and its ruthless violence, was enough for the universe to bring about such an overwhelmingly sensitive man. Despite whatever created this sensitivity, it was Thami’s lens with which to create art that reflected not only the macrocosmic monstrosity that racism produced, but also the microcosmic manifestations of South Africa's participation. Microcosm is a misnomer considering the impact apartheid had on Mnyele and how it limited his ability to move within his own country. These limitations would find Mnyele and his comrades finding both solace and artistic inspiration in the workings of jazz musicians like John Coltrane and Charlie Parker and writers like Wole Soyinka and Frantz Fanon—people who shared similar struggles thousands of miles away.

It wasn't just a kinship with people of similar skin tones or even plights, but also with artists, such as Van Gogh, Michelangelo, and even Vietnamese poets that inspired Mnyele to dig deep within the confines of his sensitivity to reveal the reality he wanted his art to convey. Even still, it was the death of friend and countryman Steve Biko that served as a political turning point for Mnyele and his artistic purpose. Mnyele's art seems to leave enough openness to interpretation while using that same openness to convey a sense of the freedom he fought so unassumingly for.

Despite Wylie's "fragmented" account of Mnyele's life story she still leaves us with enough insight into the life of a man whose artwork details through each piece, his struggle to and for an understanding of a psyche confined by the limits of hatred and its imposition on a people. It is so difficult to sum up the impact of someone’s life in a book, but Wylie beautifully opens us to the continual artistic profundity each time we Thami Mnyele's name.

Written by: Olupero R. Aiyenimelo, February 27th 2009

Latino Politics: Identity, Mobilization and Representation

admin — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 02:08:00 +0000

Edited by Rodolfo Espino, David L. Leal, Kenneth J. Meier

University of Virginia Press

This book is a major contribution to the history of Latino politics in the United States. It is an indispensable reference for historians, economists, and political scientists, as well as any serious reader interested in the Latino political situation in the U.S.

At its core is a series of five parts: each of them consists of approximately three essays that give a thorough analysis of such themes as identity politics, political action and public opinion, coalitional politics, political representation, and the future of Latino politics. Latinos have not yet attained full representation within U.S. politics, just as they haven't achieved full equality in American society.

Citing the constant growth of the Latino population in the U.S. (35.3 million in 2000), and its numerous complexities and diversities, the fundamental question of Latino political identities are reconstructed for the purpose of various political organizations. David Leal moves the focus from group identities to individual identities. He explores the concept of "Latino public opinion" and if it does, in fact, exists in the U.S.

In the following section, Michael Jones-Correa explores the relevant approaches to the understanding of the Latino political experience from the ethnic, transnational and immigrant perspectives. The dominant attitude that prevails amongst political scientists is to treat Latinos as mere observers in ethnic politics in the U.S., Jones-Correa argues.

The essay by Luis Fraga and Sharon Navarro on Latino politics in terms of gender politics is of major importance. The descriptive differences between Latino men and Latina women are well delineated. For example, Latina heads of households are less likely to vote that their males counterparts. Also, patterns of both gender and ethnic representation vary considerably by state. California leads with 23%, the largest representation of Latina women; Texas has the lowest representation, 21%.

Latina feminists have organized numerous regional and national conferences to address their concerns; first wave feminists incorporated issues of race, class and gender by addressing experiences of poor working class Mexican women. Second wave feminists focus on labour movements. One of the first national labour figures of Mexican descent was Lucy Eldine González. Most historians list her as a Mexican Indian. In the history of labour movement, there were some extraordinary women leaders living at the beginning of the twentieth century, such as Luisa Capetillo (1880-1922), Concepción Torres and Juana Colón. They opened the possibilities for Latinas' further work against traditional patriarchy. Even though Latina women have not yet played a major role in politics, it has begun to change.

In the next chapter, the writers focus on the political identities of the Latino and comparisons of Latino political actions. Matt Barreto explores the characteristics of candidates that affect Latinos’ voting habits and Ricardo Ramírez analyzes the characteristics of the Latino population that shapes the choices of political candidates. Louis DeSipio and Adrian Pantoja compare issues of identity within Latino subpopulations, for example, comparing Puerto Ricans with Mexicans and Salvadorans.

Essays in section four examine the political representation of Latinos in a variety of institutional settings. For example, Espino focuses on Latinos’ representation by Latinos members in the U.S. Congress; Jason Casellas studies the representation of Latinos in the U.S. House of Representatives. Eric Gonzalez-Juenke examines their representation in local educational systems while Nick Theobald looks at the degree of responsiveness to politics amongst the Latino population.

The last section, in which Valerie Martinez-Ebers and Manuel Avalos examine the implications for the future of Latino politics opens the area by academic scholars future research.

This latest study of Latino politics is comprehensive and illuminating. It also advances our understanding of the Latinos issues in the U.S.

Written by: Anna Hamling, February 8th 2009