The Broom Closet: Secret Meanings of Domesticity in Postfeminist Novels by Louise Erdrich, Mary Gordon, Toni Morrison, Marge Piercy, Jane Smiley, and Amy Tan

Front Cover
Peter Lang, 1999 - Literary Criticism - 239 pages
A doctorate-holding editor/columnist at an alternative newsweekly, Cooperman dissects the symbolism of and women's ambivalence toward their domestic roles as depicted in recent culturally diverse US feminist fiction. Conceiving housework as "an art and science of the boundaries," she discusses individual authors, novels, and shared motifs: domesticity as ordering chaos, the unappreciated hollow woman, sustaining home ties, powers of life and death, the sacred in the mundane, and reasons for making a home. Includes a decent categorized bibliography, but no index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

From inside the book

Contents

CHAPTER
1
CHAPTER
19
CHAPTER THREE
43
Copyright

8 other sections not shown

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1999)

The Author: Jeannette Batz Cooperman holds a Doctorate in American Studies and a Bachelor's in Philosophy and Communication from Saint Louis University. A senior editor and columnist at The Riverfront Times alternative newsweekly, she's won numerous awards for her reporting on health, education, women's issues, and social justice. Dr. Cooperman has written Half Life: What We Give Up To Work and the educational text for A Child's Story: Recovering Through Creativity.

Bibliographic information