Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West - Hardcover

4.05

21 ratings by Goodreads

9780806129297: Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0806129298 ISBN 13: 9780806129297

Publisher: Univ of Oklahoma Pr, 1997

A major goal of the New Western History is to chronicle the vast diversity of western experience. In this pathbreaking anthology, coeditors Elizabeth Jameson and Susan Armitage-who brought us "The Women’s West in 1987"-meet that challenge by bringing together twenty-nine essays that present women of all races as actors in their own lives and in the history of the American West and locate them in a framework that connects gender, race, and class.

In mythic sagas of the American West, the wide western range offered boundless opportunity to a limited cast of white men. Buffalo roamed, deer and antelope played, and women’s voices were never heard. Writing the Range allows us to hear many long-silenced women: Spanish-Mexican settlers and American Indians on New Spain’s northern frontiers; Chinese, Basque, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Slavic, and Irish immigrants; film stars Dolores del Rio and Lupe Velez; Navajos and African Americans who moved to western cities during World War II; and the activist Mothers of East Los Angeles, who organized to resist environmental dangers to their community.

A valuable introduction to the rapidly changing field of western history, Writing the Range explains clearly how race, class, and culture are constructed and connected. The first section examines issues raised by more than a decade of multicultural western women’s histories; following are six chronological sections spanning four centures. Each section offers a short introduction connecting is essays and placing them in analytic and historical perspective. Clearly written and accessible, Writing the Range makes a major contribution in ethnic history, women’s history, and interpretations of the American West.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

Destroying the myth that women in the American West were merely the worried wives or saucy saloon singers portrayed in the movies, the 29 essays in this collection show that females played a vital role on the American frontier. The essays often have a critical aspect, making specific arguments about the role women played in the settling of the West, but what is perhaps most enlightening about the book are biographical sketches demonstrating that the some of the most remarkable people taming the frontier were women.

About the Author:

Susan Armitage is Professor of History and Women Studies at Washington State University and Editor of Frontiers: A Journal of Women?s Studies. Armitage is a cofounder of the Coalition for Western Women?s History and coeditor of The Women?s West.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.