Publisher's Synopsis
By deconstructing the gendered terms of cultural representations of the American self, this project traces the many-faceted discursive possibilities of female desire in relation to community.;Begining with Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter", Hester Pyrnne, a paradigm of gendered dissent, signifies the trajectory of Otherness, of a silenced singularity this work maps through to Marilynne Robinson's "Housekeeping" and Toni Morrison's "Beloved". Other texts include Anzia Yezierska's "Bread Givers", Gayl Jones' "Corregidora", Gertrude Stein's "Melanctha" and Hisaye Yamamoto's "Seventeen Syllables". The interdisciplanary contribution of this work explores contemporary ideas in language, ethnicity, race and feminst theory as they apply to the voice of female desire historically silenced in the tidied rooms of America's cultural house.
