1st Edition

Unrelated Kin Race and Gender in Women's Personal Narratives

Edited By Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis, Michele Foster Copyright 1996

    This groundbreaking book presents conceptual, theoretical and applied research on women's life histories. The authors fulfill two needs: they provide a collection of essays that grapple with controversial issues in the study of life history, and they present many narratives from women of color, the majority collected and interpreted by women of color. The individual chapters offer a variety of voices linked by a philosophical and political orientation that places women of color at the center of scholarly inquiry rather than at the periphery. Ultimately, readers find in this text innovative ways of reconceptualizing the complexities of women's lives.

    Acknowledgments, Introduction, MOTHERS, FAMILY, AND SURVIVAL, 1. From a Lineage of Southern Women, 2. "You Don't Live Just For Yourselves", 3. More than a Mother, TRANSFORMATION AND CHANGE, 4. "I Know Who I Am", 5. The Multiple and Transformatory Identities of Puerto Rican Women in the U.S., 6. "I Have a Frog in My Stomach", LANGUAGE, HISTORY, AND CULTURE, 7. "Tryin' to Make Ends Meet", 8. "Comrade Sisters", 9. From the Inside Out, INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS, 10. Hands in the Chit'lins, 11. An Anthropological Approach to Cambodian Refugee Women, 12. Like Us But Not One of Us, Contributors, Index

    Biography

    Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis is Associate Professor of English at Western Michigan University. She is the author of My Soul Is My Own (Routledge, 1993). Michele Foster is Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Education at University of California, Davis.

    "Unrelated Kin is a wonderful compendium of essays about race and gender in women's life narratives. It places the stories of women of color at the center of scholarly discourse." -- Patricia Bell-Scott, editor of Life Notes: Personal Writings by Contemporary Black Women