Full Description
The twenty-three distinguished writers included in From Curlers to Chainsaws: Women and Their Machines invite machines into their lives and onto the page. In every room and landscape these writers occupy, gadgets that both stir and stymie may be found: a Singer sewing machine, a stove, a gun, a vibrator, a prosthetic limb, a tractor, a Dodge Dart, a microphone, a smartphone, a stapler, a No. 1 pencil and, of course, a curling iron and a chainsaw.
From Curlers to Chainsaws is a groundbreaking collection of lyrical and illuminating essays about the serious, silly, seductive, and sometimes sorrowful relationships between women and their machines. This collection explores in depth objects we sometimes take for granted, focusing not only on their functions but also on their powers to inform identity.
For each writer, the device moves beyond the functional to become a symbolic extension of the writer's own mind—altering and deepening each woman's concept of herself.
Contents
Contents Preface Acknowledgments Hearth and Home Norma Tilden - Maytag Washer, 1939 Joyce Dyer - My Mother's Singer Psyche Williams-Forson - If You Can't Stand the Heat: Ruminations on the Stove from an African American Woman Rebecca McClanahan - Sad-Iron, Glad-Iron Joy Castro - Grip Bedroom and Birthing Room E. J. Levy - Of Vibrators Jennifer Cognard-Black - The Hot Thing Emily Rapp - Beautiful Monster: Life with a Prosthetic Limb Monica Frantz - Midwife Hands, Mother Hands Farm, Lawn, Hill, and Wood Mary Swander - Tsantas and the Mind-Expanding Power of a Small Machine Mary Quade - Old Iron: A Restoration Maureen Stanton - All Flesh Is Grass Karen Salyer McElmurray - Driven Ana Maria Spagna - More Than Noise Stage and World Debra Marquart - The Microphone Erotic Elizabeth MacLeod Walls - I, Phone Melissa A. Goldthwaite - Body, Camera, Self Diana Salman - Lebanese Airwaves Monica Berlin - Remembered Is Misremembered, Then Turns The Writer's Studio Jen Hirt - Swingline Nine Sue William Silverman - The Qwertyist Karen Outen - On Typing and Salvation Nikky Finney - Inquisitor and Insurgent: Black Woman with Pencil, Sharpened Contributors
