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Full Description
This book examines Lee Smith's novel-length fiction and its powerful reflection of her personal search for and journey toward spiritual reconciliation. The protagonists of Smith's novels feel estranged from any sense of feminine sacredness as they struggle for a belief system that offers them hope and validation.
Chapters describe how Smith has retrieved in her fiction a source of transformative power--the power of the sexual, maternal, feminine divine--in hopes of creating a new image of the total, sacred female whose sexuality, creativity, spirituality, and maternity can reside comfortably in the bodies of everyday heroines.
Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Lee Smith Chronology
Introduction
I. "Nothing left to say": Silenced by the Dichotomy in The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed and Something in the Wind
II. "Visions of rape": Patriarchal Assault in Fancy Strut and Black Mountain Breakdown
III. "Enclosed ... in God's womb": The Chance for Rebirth in Oral History
IV. "Upended among these roses": Damage and Hope for Healing in Family Linen
V. "I walked in my body like a Queen": The Honey-Imbued Goddess in Fair and Tender Ladies
VI. "Figures a-dancing ... in the flames": Toward Healing the Wound in The Devil's Dream
VII. "Swimming free ... in and out of undersea caverns": Reconciliation with the Feminine Divine in Saving Grace
VIII. "Praying straight into the wind": The Sacred Circular Journey in The Last Girls
IX. "Part of the earth and the sky, the living and the dead": The Divine Cycle of Life in On Agate Hill
Conclusion
Works Cited
Index
