If you thought you knew a lot about the 'wives' of modernism and the various forms of silencing they suffered, Kate Zambreno's Heroines will teach you more; if you didn't know much, your mouth will fall open in enraged amazement. Zambreno admirably transforms copious research and personal experience into vernacular knowledge, then heats up the brew into a justified rant about dynamics that may have shape-shifted over the past 100 years but have (sadly) not disappeared. Bravo. -- Maggie Nelson, author of Bluets and The Art of Cruelty
Kate Zambreno is the author of the novels Green Girl and O Fallen Angel as well as the nonfiction Heroines and Book of Mutter (both published by Semiotexte(e)).
The book is startlingly insightful.Listed in "Books You Should Read"
- Jezebel.comIssues a powerful clarion call for a supportive community of female writers who will fixate on their own experiences without shame and reject the 'measuring rod' of the 'Great American (Male) Novelist.'
-Publishers WeeklyI was reading your book intensely for days and people started asking, 'Ok ok, what is this book?' What is this book you are so enraptured by? And I said, 'Well, it's a book I've been waiting for for a long time.' I am very excited it exists.
-Mary Borkowski, The New InquiryIt should come as no surprise that her provocative new work, Heroines, published by Semiotext(e)'s Active Agents imprint next month, challenges easy categorization, this time by poetically swerving in and out of memoir, diary, fiction, literary history, criticism, and theory. With equal parts unabashed pathos and exceptional intelligence, Heroines foregrounds female subjectivity to produce an impressive and original work that examines the suppression of various female modernists in relation to Zambreno's own complicated position as a writer and a wife.
-Christopher Higgs, The Paris Review OnlineIntensity and intelligence forge the baseline current that runs through and characterizes most of Kate Zambreno's written work.Heroines was named one of the 'Most Anticipated' Books of 2012.
-The MillionsFor anyone interested in the present and future of literature, Heroines is required reading, and rereading.
-Liz Baudler, Examiner.comNamed one of the best books of 2012 by Laurie Penny in The New Statesman ('a lush, lyrical feminist memoir'), by Michele Filgate and Karolina Waclawiak at Salon, by Elissa Schappell at the Tin House blog, by Tobias Carroll at Vol. 1 Brooklyn, by Laura Pearson at Time Out Chicago, at The Nervous Breakdown, the ICA London blog, at Drawn&Quarterly bookstore, and by Verso Books.
-In her third book, Heroines, a genre-defying battle cry about forgotten and suppressed women in literature (as well as her role in the gendered story of her own life), Zambreno's mirror is more relentless and reflective than ever. A scholarly treatise for readers who never cared about scholarship, and a memoir for those who have had enough with the insularity of simple confession, Heroines synthesizes the raw passion of a diary with the relevance and scope of nothing less than the history of literature. As 2012 nears a close, I'm hard-pressed to think of a book I've read this year that obsessed me more in the moment, rippled out as much into my daily life and conversations, or left more powerful aftershocks.
-Gina Frangello, The RumpusZambreno stages an impassioned encounter between the medicalised lives of Jane Bowles, Vivienne Eliot, Zelda Fitzgerald and other Modernist wives and mistresses and her own struggles as a young woman and a writer. The book sizzles with combative, confessional wit as she deconstructs the toxic strategies that Anglo-US culture uses to dismiss or erase 'the girl writing'. Brilliant and groundbreaking.
-David Kennedy , Times Higher EducationThe writing in Heroines is sharp, visceral, self-avowedly furious, often brilliant...
-Jerome Boyd Maunsell, Times Literary SupplementZambreno doesn't write with the measured voice of someone who can count on being listened to, but with the wail of someone confined to a shed.
-Sheila Heti, London Review of BooksIt is in her 'counterattack against this censorship; that Zambreno is at her most exhilarating and eviscerating: rightfully unashamed to acknowledge that it began from a position of anger, Heroines is rigorous and confident, fiercely intelligent in its demand for a fairer way of reading, writing and writing about women-past, present and future.
-Juliet Jacques, New StatesmanThe book sizzles with combative, confessional wit as she deconstructs the toxic strategies that Anglo-US culture uses to dismiss or erase 'the girl writing'. Brilliant and groundbreaking.
-David Kennedy, Times Higher EducationAn eloquent plea that diaries and other traditionally 'feminine' forms of writing be paid their due.
-Kate Rouhandeh, The Paris Review Online![]() |
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