Women's Writing Worldwide

 Word Count: 290 Florida Scott Maxwell was born in Florida, ironically, who originally pursued acting as a career. She eventually gave it all up to marry and live with her husband in the Scotland. She was a book writer, a playwriter, and a mother on top of it all. She then became a Jungian analyst and maintained that job for 25 years. Through the span of her time into her old age, she writes this excerpt to give insight into her life. In her essay, Maxwell discusses aging and the difficulties that come with getting older. Her essay is full of of moving observations and insightful insights about the aging process and the ways in which we can achieve fulfillment in our latter years. The following quote is one of Scott-Maxwell's passages: “‘What more is expected out of me?’ Have we got to pretend out of noblesse oblige that age is nothing, in order to encourage the other? This we do with certain haughtiness, realizing now that we have reached the place beyond resignation, a place I ha...

 Word Count: 252 Eva Hoffman came to Canada in 1959 from Canada from Poland. She mostly described this experience in her book, “Lost in Translation”, written in 1989. Her book was known for her commentary on learning languages in their complexity and how hard it was to learn how to switch between multiple languages. She was amazing at conveying the experience and process of being thrown into an entirely new culture and environment. She then became a U.S. resident in 1963 and obtained numerous degrees from Rice, Yale, and Harvard. In addition, she also became and editor for the New York Times Book Review. In her memoir, Eva offers an insight into her struggles immigrating as they attempt to adjust to a new language and society. Hoffman's personal experience of coming to Canada as a teenager after leaving Poland is a poignant and emotional account of the challenges that many immigrants encounter while trying to start over in a new nation. Hoffman's insights on how language affect...

 Word Count: 268 Audre Lorde was born in Grenada and moved to New York in 1924. She was born around the time that the stock market crashed. She was the third child and was set aprat from the other two. Living during the depression she did not experience the same struggles as many around her, or a least not the reality of her family’s struggles. She then became a poet as well as a professor in English at Hunter College in NY. She was well established in her identity and proud to be a black lesbian feminist. She then went on to write numerous things from poetry, autobiographies, and journals. Audre Lorde wrote her excerpt like a recollection of events and gave the feel of a diary. She recollects her memories based on the childhood with her mother and her relationship with her and others perceived her. Audre described her mother as “my mother must have been other than woman. Again, she was certainly not man” (497). Audre spends the next few pages describing her mother in great detail ...

 Word Count: 329 Zora Neale Hurston was an American writer, folklorist, and anthropologist who was most known for her documentation of African American culture in the rural South. Hurston was raised and educated in Florida, she went on to study anthropology and literature at Howard University and Barnard College. She published numerous other works of fiction and non-fiction, as well as a collection of folktales and anthropological studies of African American culture. She went back and looked into the customs and after being trained by Frank Boas. Hurston was known for her novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God," in American literature along with her many other works. Hurston is recognized with helping to establish the study of African American folklore as a respectable academic area. Hurston was a pioneer in the field of cultural anthropology. In particular we see in an excerpt form her account called “Mules and Men”.  “Ah always like to be good as my word, and Ah ...

 Word Count: 339 Sara Suleri was a writer from Pakistan. She was raised in Karachi in Pakistan. He father was a journalist, and her mother was a teacher. Coming from a Pakistan/Welsh background she grew up and eventually moved to England for a brief amount of time. Later in her life she moved to Connecticut where she is a professor at Yale University teaching English. Suleri goes through experiences of “meatless days” beginning with her conflicts with her family based on the food she was eating. She was told the the  kapura’s  she was eating were “sweetbreads”. These sweetbreads were something commonplace around her and she did not think much of it until some people started mentioning what went into the food. She wrestled with this for quite some time. Her friend Tillat told her “They’re testicles, that’s what kapura really are" (731). Still, she refused to believe it. When this was revealed to her, she was shocked but also felt betrayed. After all, the one who had origin...

 Word Count: 250 Onnie Lee Logan was a midwife from Alabama who became known through her story. She came from a black family and like her relatives before her, she became a midwife. She had many siblings and had gotten into the practice of being a midwife very young and her story was only spread verbally. Back then many people who could not read or write well had their stories transcribed for them. In Logan’s case it was to Katherine Clark, an English professor at the University of Alabama. Her story was then written into a book called Motherwit.  Throughout the book, Logan reflects on the broader social and cultural forces that shaped her experiences as a midwife, exploring the impact of the constant struggles on the women and families she served. She also writes about her own personal growth and development, reflecting on the ways in which her work as a midwife helped her to find a sense of purpose in her life. Logan goes through the process of how she does her work, to the ...