Continental, Latin-American and Francophone Women Writers ed. by Eunice Myers and Ginette Adamson (review)

248Rocky Mountain Review EUNICE MYERS and GINETTE ADAMSON, eds. Continental , Latin-American and Francophone Women Writers. Lanham, New York: University Press ofAmerica, 1987. 208 p. This collection of papers from the Wichita State University Conference on Foreign Literature, 1984-1985, introduces a useful and engaging array of perspectives. Women writers from France, Québec, Austria, Germany, Costa \Rica, Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, Spain, Denmark, and the United States are discussed in essays written in French, Spanish, and English. The papers present an unusually diverse selection of topics ranging from studies of well known and widely translated writers such as Hélène Cixous and Marguerite Duras to discussion of the lyrics of popular songs in Québec and analyses of Latin American women writers just beginning to emerge as literary forces in their own countries. There are in this collection some very strong and original efforts to describe textual elements that make writing authentically feminine. Mary Greenwood-Johnson's discussion of "The 'Different' Cinema of Marguerite Duras," which explores the "sensual power of voice over image" (84), offers creative insights into Duras' production of essentially feminine texts through non-representation and blackness. Frank W. Young's "Elfriede Jelinek—Profile of an Austrian Feminist," a presentation intended to introduce Jelinek to a wider public, is a good example of an important function of a collection like this. Young provides sufficient general background to engage a reader unfamiliar with Jelinek's work and, in his discussion of the effect of politics and a woman's place in society on her style, attempts to situate Jelinek's work in a genuinely feminist context. "Sexist Literary History ? The Case of Louise von François" by Thomas C. Fox also represents a thoughtful approach to problems that are unique to women writers. In his comparison of "forgotten" male novelists to "forgotten" women novelists, for example, he addresses important historical issues. The papers presenting Latin American women writers are generally rich in historical background, summary material, and, with a couple of exceptions , in theoretical and political analysis of feminine writing. Elias Miguel Muñoz, looking at "La mujer y la historia en Más allá de las máscaras de Lucía Guerra," explores the politics of both language and history manifest in a feminine text and makes useful distinctions between the opposing languages of women "who struggle in the world of men" and "women manipulated by masculine discourse" (142). Emelda Ramos' "Hacia una narrativa femenina en la literatura dominicana," an exploratory essay in the best sense of the word, attempts definition of feminine writing through analysis of style and language in a political context. The collection is well framed. It opens with a theoretical overview: "French Feminist Theories and the Gender of the Text" by Sally Kitch. After a brief discussion of the location of gender in the text, Kitch examines French feminist theories in relation to Lacanian concepts, particularly in the writing of Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, and Monique Wittig, and concludes with an "Exploration of Texts" which compares the image of the orange in a passage from Joyce's Ulysses to one from Cixous' Vivre l'Orange. The final chapter of the collection, Joyce Carlson-Leavitt's "Eroticism in Olga Savary's Repertorio Salvagem: The Struggle for Full Freedom," explodes from Cixous' rather intellectual discussion of the orange into the passionately earthy, determinedly sexual imagery of the Brazilian poet. Unfortunately, this potentially generative framing suggests an order and Book Reviews249 depth or crescendo effect that do not characterize the book as a whole. As a published collection, the book has some major flaws, particularly its lack of internal coherence and the uneven quality of some ofthe essays. In their very brief introduction, the editors state that "the literary works studied herein . . . pursue a common goal: an expression of the self through the powers of language" (xi). This might have been a point of departure for a significant "open" feminine dialogue, but the editors withdraw from the process at this point and too many of the papers in the collection seem to be based on the premise that, because a work has been written by a woman, it is inherently significant as...