"Woman Critiqued will make us wonder why we thought we could grasp modern Japanese literature without concerted attention to what men and women had to say about women’s literary production. This remarkable collection is full of surprises, even where predictable arguments are being made. Careful translations of writings by the familiar and the obscure, together with thought-provoking introductions and supporting apparatus, make this an indispensable text for the study of modern Japanese culture and society." —Norma M. Field, University of Chicago Over the past thirty years translations of Japanese women’s writing and biographies of women writers have enriched and expanded our understanding of modern Japanese literature. But how have women writers been received and read in Japan? To appreciate the subterfuges, strategies, and choices that the modern Japanese woman writer has faced, readers must consider the criticisms leveled against her, the expectations and admonitions that have been whispered in her ear, and pay attention to the way she herself has responded. What did it mean to be a woman writer in twentieth-century Japan? How was she defined and how did this definition limit her artistic sphere? Woman Critiqued builds on existing scholarship by offering English-language readers access to some of the more salient critiques that have been directed at women writers, on the one hand, and reactions to these by women writers, on the other. The grouping of the essays into chapters organized by theme clarifies how the discussion in Japan has been framed by certain assumptions and how women have repeatedly tried to intervene by playing with, undercutting, or attempting to exceed these assumptions. Chapter introductions contextualize the translated essays historically and draw out aspects that warrant particular scrutiny or explication. Although the translators do not cover all aspects or genres identified with women’s literary endeavors in the twentieth-century, they provide a significant understanding of the evaluative systems under which Japanese women writers have worked. Woman Critiqued will be eagerly read by specialists in modern Japanese literature and those interested in comparative literature, women’s studies, gender studies, and history. Featured writers: Akitsu Ei, Akiyama Shun, Hara Shiro, Hasegawa Izumi, Kobayashi Hideo, Kora Rumiko, Matsuura Rieko, Mishima Yukio, Mitsuhashi Takajo, Mizuta Noriko, Miwata Masako, Oguri Fuyo, Okuno Takeo, Ooka Makoto, Saito Minako, Shibusawa Tatsuhiko, Setouchi Harumi, Takahara Eiri, Takahashi Junko, Takahashi Takako, Tanaka Miyoko, Tomioka Taeko, Tsujii Takashi, Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, Tsushima Yoko, Yosano Akiko. Translators: Tomoko Aoyama, Jan Bardsley, Janine Beichman, Rebecca L. Copeland, Mika Endo, Joan E. Ericson, Barbara Hartley, Maryellen Toman Mori, Yoshiko Nagaoka, Kathryn Pierce, Laurel Rasplica Rodd, Amanda Seaman, Eiji Sekine, Judy Wakabayashi.

This collection includes translated works by Japanese women writers that deal with the experiences of modern women. The work of these women represents current feminist perception, imagination and thought. "Here are Japanese women in infinite and fascinating variety -- ardent lovers, lonely single women, political activists, betrayed wives, loyal wives, protective mothers, embittered mothers, devoted daughters. ... a new sense of the richness of Japanese women's experience, a new appreciation for feelings too long submerged". -- The New York Times Book Review

A happily misanthropic Middle East divorcee finds refuge in books in a “beautiful and absorbing” novel of late-life crisis (The New York Times). Aaliya is a divorced, childless, and reclusively cranky translator in Beirut nurturing doubts about her latest project: a 900-page avant-garde, linguistically serpentine historiography by a late Chilean existentialist. Honestly, at seventy-two, should she be taking on such a project? Not that Aailiya fears dying. Women in her family live long; her mother is still going crazy. But on this lonely day, hour-by-hour, Aaliya’s musings on literature, philosophy, her career, and her aging body, are suddenly invaded by memories of her volatile past. As she tries in vain to ward off these emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left. In this “meditation on, among other things, aging, politics, literature, loneliness, grief and resilience” (The New York Times), Alameddine conjures “a beguiling narrator . . . who is, like her city, hard to read, hard to take, hard to know and, ultimately, passionately complex” (San Francisco Chronicle). A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award, An Unnecessary Woman is “a fun, and often funny . . . grave, powerful . . . [and] extraordinary” Washington Independent Review of Books) ode to literature and its power to define who we are. “Read it once, read it twice, read other books for a decade or so, and then pick it up and read it anew. This one’s a keeper” (The Independent)

To feminists and some postmodernists reason/emotion and man/woman represent two fundamental polarities, fixed deep within Western philosophy and reflected in the structures of our languages, and two sets of hierarchical power relations in patriarchal society. Raia Prokhovnik challenges the tradition of dualism and argues that rational woman need no longer be a contradiction in terms. Prokhovnik examines in turn: · the nature of dichotomy, its problems and an alternative · the reason/emotion dichotomy · dichotomies central to the man/woman dualism, such as sex/gender and the heterosexual/ist norm

How women figured in the expansion of the national body of the Japanese empire

Originally published in 1984, Reading the Romance challenges popular (and often demeaning) myths about why romantic fiction, one of publishing's most lucrative categories, captivates millions of women readers. Among those who have disparaged romance reading are feminists, literary critics, and theorists of mass culture. They claim that romances enforce the woman reader's dependence on men and acceptance of the repressive ideology purveyed by popular culture. Radway questions such claims, arguing that critical attention "must shift from the text itself, taken in isolation, to the complex social event of reading." She examines that event, from the complicated business of publishing and distribution to the individual reader's engagement with the text. Radway's provocative approach combines reader-response criticism with anthropology and feminist psychology. Asking readers themselves to explore their reading motives, habits, and rewards, she conducted interviews in a midwestern town with forty-two romance readers whom she met through Dorothy Evans, a chain bookstore employee who has earned a reputation as an expert on romantic fiction. Evans defends her customers' choice of entertainment; reading romances, she tells Radway, is no more harmful than watching sports on television. "We read books so we won't cry" is the poignant explanation one woman offers for her reading habit. Indeed, Radway found that while the women she studied devote themselves to nurturing their families, these wives and mothers receive insufficient devotion or nurturance in return. In romances the women find not only escape from the demanding and often tiresome routines of their lives but also a hero who supplies the tenderness and admiring attention that they have learned not to expect. The heroines admired by Radway's group defy the expected stereotypes; they are strong, independent, and intelligent. That such characters often find themselves to be victims of male aggression and almost always resign themselves to accepting conventional roles in life has less to do, Radway argues, with the women readers' fantasies and choices than with their need to deal with a fear of masculine dominance. These romance readers resent not only the limited choices in their own lives but the patronizing atitude that men especially express toward their reading tastes. In fact, women read romances both to protest and to escape temporarily the narrowly defined role prescribed for them by a patriarchal culture. Paradoxically, the books that they read make conventional roles for women seem desirable. It is this complex relationship between culture, text, and woman reader that Radway urges feminists to address. Romance readers, she argues, should be encouraged to deliver their protests in the arena of actual social relations rather than to act them out in the solitude of the imagination. In a new introduction, Janice Radway places the book within the context of current scholarship and offers both an explanation and critique of the study's limitations.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE “A must-read about modern Britain and womanhood . . . An impressive, fierce novel about the lives of black British families, their struggles, pains, laughter, longings and loves . . . Her style is passionate, razor-sharp, brimming with energy and humor. There is never a single moment of dullness in this book and the pace does not allow you to turn away from its momentum.” —Booker Prize Judges Bernardine Evaristo is the winner of the 2019 Booker Prize and the first black woman to receive this highest literary honor in the English language. Girl, Woman, Other is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of Black British women that paints a vivid portrait of the state of contemporary Britain and looks back to the legacy of Britain’s colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean. The twelve central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives: Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her Black lesbian identity; her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London’s funding-deprived schools; Carole, one of Shirley’s former students, is a successful investment banker; Carole’s mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about her daughter’s lack of rootedness despite her obvious achievements. From a nonbinary social media influencer to a 93-year-old woman living on a farm in Northern England, these unforgettable characters also intersect in shared aspects of their identities, from age to race to sexuality to class. Sparklingly witty and filled with emotion, centering voices we often see othered, and written in an innovative fast-moving form that borrows technique from poetry, Girl, Woman, Other is a polyphonic and richly textured social novel that shows a side of Britain we rarely see, one that reminds us of all that connects us to our neighbors, even in times when we are encouraged to be split apart.