An Angle of Vision

This compelling volume brings together personal essays and memoir by a diverse group of gifted authors united by their poor or working-class origins. The contributors include Dorothy Allison, Joy Castro, Lisa D. Chavez, Mary Childers, Sandra Cisneros, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Teresa de la Caridad Doval, Maureen Gibbon, Dwonna Goldstone, Joy Harjo, Lorraine M. Lopez, Karen Salyer McElmurray, Amelia Montes, Bich Minh Nguyen, Judy Owens, Lynn Pruett, Heather Sellers, and Angela Threatt. In a sense, these stories are the travel narratives of women who have journeyed beyond their family circumstances to cross class borders, aided by educational opportunities that encouraged their literary gifts to blossom. Some of the essays reflect on the immigrant experience and struggles against the multiplying factors of poverty, gender, and ethnicity; others recount the first moment of awareness of class (for Bich Minh Nguyen, it occurred while watching Laverne and Shirley on the family's first television); other essays describe encounters in the relatively privileged world of higher education - where the subject of class is mostly off-limits but evident everywhere (for Mary Childers, 'Colleges depend on employees who can verbally repress for success'). Throughout, the authors engage questions of work and family, men and money, motherhood and sexuality, and the experiences that have provided an opportunity for each to develop her own distinct identity and to reflect on both sides of the class coin from her own particular 'angle of vision'.

ISBN 0472070789   Pages 216 ISBN13 9780472070787 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 431 Publisher The University of Michigan Press   Published in Ann Arbor, MI Imprint The University of Michigan Press   Series title Class: Culture S. Format Hardback   Height (mm) 152 Publication date 15 Dec 2009   Width (mm) 228 DEWEY 810.99287   Spine width (mm) 20 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate

Introduction		Joining the Conversation by Lorraine M. Lopez		1
		Stubborn Girls and Mean Stories by Dorothy Allison		11
		Queen for a Day by Amelia Maria De La Luz Montes		20
		Somewhere in Between by Angela Threatt		33
		The Flying Man by Joy Harjo		43
		Our Mother's Lie by Lorraine M. Lopez		52
		Laverne & Shirley Days by Bich Minh Nguyen		66
		Another Frigidaire Sketch by Teresa Dovalpage		72
		Home Economics by Dwonna Goldstone		83
		Only Daughter by Sandra Cisneros		93
		Child of the Air House by Lynn Pruett		97
		Sex and the Inner City by Mary Childers		104
		In My Mother's House by Lisa D. Chavez		117
		Bumming Work by Judy Owens		131
		Stink Jobs by Maureen Gibbon		142
		Sails with Good People by Heather Sellers		152
		First Class Back to the Summer of Love by Judith Ortiz Cofer		160
		Trip Around the World by Karen Salyer McElmurray		171
		An Angle of Vision by Joy Castro		184
		Suggested for Further Reading		193
		Contributors		199

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