Confronting Visuality in Multi-ethnic Women's Writing

Providing new perspectives on critically-acclaimed contemporary women writers, Confronting Visuality in Contemporary Multi-Ethnic Women's Writing examines works by Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason, Margaret Atwood, Louise Erdrich, Gish Jen, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and Alison Bechdel. Despite over four decades of feminist engagement with visual imagery, women's social and political gains have been met with a "postfeminist sensibility" in the media that makes traditional feminist critique difficult. Angela Laflen shows how these writers foster connections between feminist criticism and today's media culture by situating images of women within larger contexts of visuality.

Angela Laflen is Associate Professor of English at Marist College, USA. Her published work focuses on online pedagogy, visual rhetoric, and gender issues, and she is the co-editor of Gender Scripts in Medicine and Narrative.

Introduction: What's (Still) Wrong with Images of Women?
PART I. COMING-OF-AGE WITH MASS MEDIA
1. (Re)visualizing History in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye
2. Transforming Culture and Consciousness in Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country
PART II. WITNESSING VISUAL MANIPULATION
3. 'There Were Signs and I Missed Them': Reading Beneath the Image in Margaret Atwood's Speculative Fiction
4. The Politics of Vanishing: Bearing Witness to the Wounded Family in Louise Erdrich's Shadow Tag
PART III. SPECTATORSHIP IN AN EXPANDED FIELD OF VISION
5. Against Visual Objectivity in Gish Jen's "Birthmates" and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's "The Ultrasound"
6. Queering Spectatorship in Alison Bechdel's Fun Home
Conclusion: Confronting Visuality in the Digital Age