A look at women writers to celebrate women’s history

“Stories are history.” So began Professor Sally Harvey’s forum on women authors last March in celebration of Women’s History Month. The Campus Life office sponsored the forum. Among the small crowd of 13 attendees, Dr. Annette Lambson, Vice President of Instruction, and Professor Seaman were present. Student Trustee Donna Evans began the forum with a poem given to her by her daughter. The forum was about literature written by women who came from different cultural backgrounds.”My purpose was to awaken people’s interest in women writers of the past and present, who were really writing history, even though what they were writing might have been fiction,” said Harvey in an interview after the forum.During the forum, attendants talked about what books they had read by the authors that were discussed in the forum. At the end, Harvey gave away a few books that were discussed.The first author Harvey presented was Willa Cather (1873-1947), a well-respected American novelist. Cather wrote 12 novels between 1913 and 1937. One of Cather’s novels, “Oh Pioneers,” is about a Swedish family in Nebraska who succeed in building their own farm. The heroine in this story is Alexandra, who makes the family farm prosper through some risk-taking after her father passes away.Another of Cather’s novels, “My Antonia,” published in 1918, was written at a time when there were negative Americans attitudes toward Eastern Europeans, like the Bohemians, because the immigrants did not speak English, had darker skin, and had different cultural practices. “My Antonia” was about a real 14-year-old girl growing up in Nebraska and having to face the hardships of coming from Czechoslovakia. Well-known author Toni Morrison’s novel, “Jazz,” a novel not often talked about, takes the reader to New York City’s Harlem in 1925. The novel shows the experience of African-Americans who moved up from the South and settled in Harlem at that time. “It’s a real exciting book, and you come to sympathize and empathize with the characters,” said Harvey. “It’s a great love triangle story.” George Elliot, a female author, who interestingly took a man’s name, shows readers nineteenth century Victorian England in her novel, “Mill on the Floss.” Published in 1860, the story takes place in the 1840s, a time when things in England were changing; people are leaving the countryside and moving into the cities. The two main characters, Maggie and Tom, are brother and sister, when their fathers loses the mill, and Maggie falls in love with the enemy’s son, who coincidentally is taking over the father’s mill. “You see the history of men and women then– and the restrictions on what they could and could not do,” explained Harvey.Other novels shared during the forum included “The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan, “The Jump-Off Creek” by Molly Klaus, “Bittersweet” by Leslie Lee, “Lakota Woman” by Mary Crow-Dog, “Ramona” by Helen Hunt-Jackson and “How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accent” by Julia Alvarez.Starting next Fall Semester 2001, a couple of new classes that focus on literature will be offered. English 37, “Literature for Women,” which will be open to all students, will be offered on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9:00 A.M. English 36, “Many Voices (twentieth Century American literature),” will focus on multicultural writers based on real-life experiences. The class will be offered on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 9:00 a.m. According to Harvey, the classes are offered every third semester, a rare treat for students to fulfill their Humanities requirements and, according to Harvey, a chance “to awaken their interest in writers out of the mainstream that they would not have known about.”