Volume 13, Issues 1 & 2
FRONT COVER: Dorothea Lange
WOMAN IN PURDAH
Oakland Museum, Calif.
Woman: An Issue. We begin with a pun: an issue—in fact, a double issue—of The Massachusetts Review; a subject of concern; a birth. The punning is appropriate for, considering women, we are necessarily moved into a world where words and concepts shift and become multiple. In this prismatic universe we discover that those patterns we believed conceptually fixed as both root and mirror of society no longer seem either so permanent or so accurate as they once did. The works in this collection reflect three worlds: the public world of politics and history; the private world of memory, psychology, and meditation; and, if only speculatively, the still unformed world which consciousness creates as we confront aspects of our personal and communal lives previously ignored or, worse, forgotten. Looking at women, we see with many eyes, speak with many voices. As undertone, however, a kind of serious playfulness persists; in exploring and exposing the facts of our existence, irony mediates anger; a hope for comedy is balanced against a necessary acknowledgement of reality’s frequent darkness. A pun, a prism, a mysterious face behind a veil, all suggest this complex multivalence.
The essays, poems, fiction, documents, and pictures in this issue constitute only a small fragment of the material received in response to our initial request for contributions. We deeply regret our inability to publish more and wish not merely to acknowledge, but to thank, those whose enthusiasm, energy, and intelligence made our work as editors both so difficult and so rewarding.
Mary Heath
Lee R. Edwards
Table of Contents
Women and Politics: The Struggle for Representation, Non-Fiction by Bella S. Abzug and Cynthia Edgar
Notes on Feminism, Non-Fiction by Anais Nin
Organizing for Freedom, Non-Fiction by Penina Migdal Glazer
Sex-Roles and Sexual Attitudes in Sweden: The New Phase, Non-Fiction by Sondra R. Herman
“Am I Not a Woman and A Sister,” Eight Drawings by Lisa Unger Baskin
Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves, Non-Fiction by Angela Davis
Affirmation of Resistance: A Response to Angela Davis, Non-Fiction by Johnetta Cole
In the Season When the Earth, Poetry by La Compuita Donzella, Translated by Giuliana Mutti
Turning; Walking Through Walls, Poetry by Lucille Clifton
Three x Three, Poetry by Sonia Sanchez
The Role of Women in Liberation Struggles, Non-Fiction by Amy Jacques Garvey
Ten Photographs by Tina Modotti; A portrait of Tina Modotti by Edward Weston
Mary Beard’s Woman as Force in History: A Critique, Non-Fiction by Berenice A. Carroll
Life’s Work, Poetry by Maxine Kumin
My Mother and Politics, Fiction by Mary Doyle Curran
The Passion of Lizzie Borden, Poetry by Ruth Whitman
Frayings, Poetry by Priscilla Gibson
Confessions of Mother Goose, Fiction by Anne Halley
Miss America, Poetry by Lillian S. Robinson
Heroines, Non-Fiction by Elizabeth T. Pochoda
Lana Would, Poetry by Nancy Raine
Female Liberation; Birth, Poetry by Sue Mullins
Art’s Looking Glass: Fifteen Self-Portraits by Women:
Art by Marietta Tintoretta; Sofonsiba Anguissola; Catharina Van Hemessen; Levina Fontana; Clara Peters; Rosalba Carriera; Anna Dorothea Therbusch-Liszewska; Adelaide Labille-Guiard; Angelica Kauffmann; Rolinda Sharples; Sarah Peale; Ann Hall; Suzanne Valadon; Gwen John; Paula Modersohn-Becker.
A Mirror for Men: Stereotypes of Women in Literature, Non-Fiction by Cynthia Griffin Wolff
Complaint, Poetry by Margaret Shook
Black Mother Woman, Poetry by Audre Lorde
Women, Energy, and Middlemarch, Non-Fiction by Lee R. Edwards
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps: A Study in Female Rebellion, Non-Fiction by Christine Stansell
Women and the Avant-Garde Theater: Interviews with Rochelle Owens, Crystal Field, Rosalyn Drexler, by Joan Goulianos
Blood Signs, Poetry by Giuliana Mutti
Norman Mailer: A Prisoner of Sex, Non-Fiction by Annette Barnes
Elizabeth Janeway and Germaine Greer, Non-Fiction by Arlyn Diamond
Deprivation, Poetry by Nancy Rice
Marriages: Zelda & Scott, Eleanor & Franklin, Non-Fiction by Mary Heath
Note from Bellevue, Poetry by Carol Hebald
Depression; Calling the Babysitter, Poetry by Ellen Dibble
“So You Mayn’t Ever Call Me Anything but Carrington”, Non-Fiction by J. J. Wilson
Sojourner Truth Calls Upon the President: an 1864 Letter by Sojourner Truth
Contributors
Congresswoman Bella Abzug is engaged in a hard battle for re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Annette Barnes teaches philosophy at Amherst College.
Lisa Unger Baskin, artist and antique dealer, is active in the Women’s movement.
Assoc. Prof, of Political Science at Illinois, Berenice Carroll is author of Design for Total War; she served as Chairwoman of the Coordinating Committee on Women in the Historical Profession.
Lucille Clifton has published children’s books as well as poetry. Her newest collection of poems is Good News About the Earth.
Johnnetta Cole is an anthropologist in the W.E.B. Dubois Dept. of Afro-Am. Studies at U.Mass., Amherst.
Mary Doyle Curran is currently professor of Irish Literature at U.Mass., Boston.
Angela Davis wrote the essay reprinted in our collection while imprisoned in California.
Arlyn Diamond, medievalist and feminist, raises Irish Wolfhounds. She and Lee Edwards are currently co-editing a book of feminist criticism and a collection of neglected imaginative writings by women.
Cynthia Edgar is an administrative assistant to Representative Bella Abzug.
Ellen Dibble‘s poems have previously appeared in The Women’s Journal.
Winner of the Gold Medal of Jamaica, Amy Jacques Garvey is a widely published author, lecturer, and spokesman for Pan-Africanism.
At work on theories of the novel, Priscilla Gibson teaches English at U.Mass., Amherst.
Penina Glazer lectures at Hampshire College on Political Women in America.
Joan Goulianos writes and teaches in New York City; her most recent book is By a Woman Writt.
“The Confessions of Mother Goose” by Anne Halley, poet and translator, is part of a novel in progress.
Actress and professor of English, Carol Hebald has published her poems widely in The Antioch Review, North American Review, and others.
Mary Heath‘s prize-winning stories have appeared in The Virginia Quarterly.
Sondra Herman is preparing a study of women in American history, and the sex roles of women in America.
Author of The Abduction, and The Nightmare Factory, Maxine Kumin‘s new book of poems Up Country will be out this fall.
Audre Lorde‘s most recent book of poems is Cables to Rage.
Sue Mullins has been active in the Women’s movement since 1968.
Poet and activist Giuliana Mutti was born on Vanzetti’s birthday.
Long a distinguished voice in modern literature, Anais Nin has just published the fourth volume of her diaries.
Elizabeth Pochoda teaches literature at Temple University, Philadelphia.
Poet Nancy Raine is now writing short stories, and a children’s book.
Ph.D. candidate Nancy Rice has previously published in The Women’s Journal.
Lillian Robinson appears in The Politics of Literature; she teaches a course at M.I.T. on “The Sexual Order.”
One of the original members of the Black Studies program at San Francisco State College, Sonia Sanchez is poet and editor of Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees of Blackness Comin at You.
Former Fulbright fellow Margaret Shook is now at Smith College.
Christine Stansell is SL Student of 19th century feminism.
Winner of the Jennie Tane Award for Poetry and director of Poetry Writing Programs in Massachusetts Schools, Ruth Whitman has just published a new book of translations, The Selected Poems of Jacob Glatstein.
J. J. Wilson teaches Comparative Literature at Sonoma State College, Calif.
Cynthia Griffin Wolff‘s new book Other Lives is due out shortly.