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Women & Literature: Topics: Women, Writing, a Space

English 264A.
Susan Hahn.

In this class we will read 10-12 short novels by women from diverse experiences, such as Joy Kogawa (Obasan), Toni Morrison (The Bluest Eye), Helena Miria Viramontes (Under the Feet of Jesus) and Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre). This class is loosely shaped around the themes of the three words in the title, Women, Writing, a Space. From Virginia Woolf's notion that every women needs a "room of her own" in order to write, to Viramontes's description of the homelessness of migrant farm working women and their families, to Kogawa's novel about the forced "relocation" of Japanese families during the second world War, we will explore through fiction how women are silenced by not having "a space"--and how women find both a literal space and a voice through writing. We will explore how writing itself often becomes a space for women.