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Writing Catholic Women

Contemporary International Catholic Girlhood Narratives

  • Book
  • © 2005

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Authors:
  1. Jeana DelRosso
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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
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  2. Introduction: Catholic Literature, Academia, and Feminism

    • Jeana DelRosso
    Pages 1-9

  3. Contemporary International Catholic Literature by Women

    • Jeana DelRosso
    Pages 11-30

  4. Sin, Sexuality, Selfhood, Sainthood, Insanity: Contemporary Catholic Girlhood Narratives

    • Jeana DelRosso
    Pages 31-74

  5. The Convent as Colonist: Catholicism in the Works of Contemporary Women Writers of the Americas

    • Jeana DelRosso
    Pages 75-97

  6. Catholicism’s Other(Ed) Holy Trinity: Race, Class, and Gender in Black Catholic Girl School Narratives

    • Jeana DelRosso
    Pages 99-120

  7. Catholicism and Magical Realism: Religious Syncretism in the Works of Contemporary Women Writers

    • Jeana DelRosso
    Pages 121-146

  8. What’s So Funny? Feminism, Catholicism, and Humor in Contemporary Women’s Literature

    • Jeana DelRosso
    Pages 147-167

  9. Conclusion: Catholic Girls, Grown Up: Parting Thoughts from a Catholic Woman

    • Jeana DelRosso
    Pages 169-173

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 175-203
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Keywords

About this book

Writing Catholic Women examines the interplay of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, and sexuality through the lens of Catholicism in a wide range of works by women writers, forging interdisciplinary connections among women's studies, religion, and late twentieth-century literature. Discussing a diverse group of authors, Jeana DelRosso posits that the girlhood narratives of such writers constitute highly charged sites of their differing gestures toward Catholicism and argues that an understanding of the ways in which women write about religion from different cultural and racial contexts offers a crucial contribution to current discussions in gender, ethnic, and cultural studies.

Reviews

Review from Choice:This book's brevity (together with its spider-speck print and prissy dust jacket) utterly belies the wit, energy, and robustness of both subject and treatment. In fact, DelRosso (College of Notre Dame of Maryland) offers a ranging exploration of recent literary representations of formative Catholic experience for women. Carrying the discussion beyond Elizabeth Evasdaughter's Catholic Girlhood Narratives (CH, Nov'96, 34-1357) and across genres and national boundaries, the author surprises the reader with the texts she treats as essentially Catholic - works by Isabella Allende, Shirley Goek-Lin Lim, Mary Gordon, Audre Lord, among others more obvious. Describing her approach as "polemically radical," DelRosso reveals the near-unbearable demands on girls/women built into Catholic orthodoxy and uncovers in these texts the rich veins of resistance, rebellion, comic subversion, and "religious syncretism" that defy canonical strictures and oblige one to rethink what it means to be Catholic in the 21st century. Though this reviewer wonders at certain omissions (e.g., recent rich Italian American women's writing), finding writers like Francine Prose, Ana Castillo, Edna O'Brien, Regina Barreca, Rigoberta Menchu , and Gish Jen in "conversation" under the same roof compensates and will invite lively discourse among readers in literature and religious studies. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. - - F. Alaya, emerita,Ramapo College of New Jersey

About the author

JEANA DELROSSO is an Assistant Professor of English and Women's Studies at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, USA. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Maryland, and her articles have appeared in NWSA Journal and MELUS.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Writing Catholic Women

  • Book Subtitle: Contemporary International Catholic Girlhood Narratives

  • Authors: Jeana DelRosso

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-04654-3

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies Collection, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2005

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4039-6757-2Published: 11 August 2005

  • eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-04654-3Published: 30 April 2016

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: X, 203

  • Topics: Twentieth-Century Literature, Gender Studies, Catholicism

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