To help holiday shoppers wade through the plethora of literary offerings, TempoWoman has assembled an eclectic list of some of the best by and about women:
Novels
– ”The Joy Luck Club,” by Amy Tan (Putnam, $18.95). Examines the bonds and the strains between young Chinese-American women and their China-born mothers. – ”Regards From the Dead Princess: A Novel of a Life,” by Kenize Mourad
(Arcade, $19.95). The author imagines the life of her mother, who was born into a harem during the last years of the Ottoman Empire.
– ”The Other Side,” by Mary Gordon (Viking, $19.95). An intelligent saga about an Irish-American family.
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– ”Ordinary Love & Good Will,” by Jane Smiley (Random House, $17.95). Two novellas about the lives of ordinary families, one from the male point of view, the other from the female point of view.
– ”Breathing Lessons,” by Anne Tyler (Berkeley, $5.50), paperback. An evocative domestic journey.
Short Stories, anthologies
– ”May Your Days be Merry & Bright-Christmas Stories by Women,” edited by Susan Koppelman (Plume, $8.95). From the joyful to the poignant.
– ”Obscene Gestures For Women,” by Janet Kauffman (Random House, $16.95). Short stories, many focused on rural or farm women.
– ”Talk That Talk: An Anthology of African-American Storytelling,” edited by Linda Goss, Marian E. Barnes (Simon & Schuster, $12.95). Stories, sermons and rhymes are featured.
– ”Cradle and All: Women Writers on Pregnancy and Birth,” edited by Laura Chester (Faber & Faber, $12.95). Poems, stories and novel excerpts from Erica Jong, Margaret Atwood, Anne Tyler and others.
Biography, autobiography
– ”The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart,” by Mary S. Lovell (St. Martin`s, $22.95) and ”Amelia Earhart: A biography,” by Doris L. Rich,
(Smithsonian Institution Press, $19.95). Two accounts of the life and mysterious disappearance of the famous flier.
– ”Roseanne: My Life as a Women,” by Roseanne Barr (Harper & Row, $18.95). The comedian tells how she went from an ostracized Jew in Salt Lake City to trailer-park mother and on to stardom.
– ”The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn,” by Retha M. Warnicke (Cambridge University Press, $18.95). A feminist historian takes a new look at the life and beheading of the second of Henry VIII`s six wives.
– ”Georgia O`Keeffe: A Life,” by Roxana Robinson (Harper & Row, $25). The first biography of the famous painter to be written with the cooperation of her family.
History, Herstory
– ”The Sisterhood: The Inside story of the Women`s Movement and the Leaders Who Made it Happen,” by Marica Cohen (Fawcett, $10.95), paperback. Juicy narrative focusing on Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer and Kate Millet.
– ”Women Together, Women Alone,” by Anita Shreve (Viking, $19.95). Consciousness-raising and its legacy examined.
– ”Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay & Lesbian Past,” edited by Martin Bauml Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey Jr. (New American Library, $24.95). Very readable collection of essays by various scholars.
– ”The Language of the Goddess,” by Marija Gimbutas, foreword by Joseph Campbell (Harper & Row, $49.95). Beautifully illustrated coffee-table book on images of goddesses in many cultures.
Contemporary life
– ”The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home,” by Arlie Hochschild with Anne Machung (Viking, $18.95). A Berkeley, Calif., sociologist documents the imbalance in the way working parents divvy up their housework and examines its effect on the quality of marriage.
– ”Living Out Loud,” by Anna Quindlen (Ivy, $4.50). A compendium of the columnist`s latest works now in paperback.
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