Sisters of the Earth: Women's Prose and Poetry About Nature by Lorraine Anderson, Lorraine Anderson

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Synopsis

Sisters of the Earth is a stirring collection of women’s writing on nature: Nature as healer. Nature as delight. Nature as mother and sister. Nature as victim. Nature as companion and reminder of what is wild in us all. Here, among more than a hundred poets and prose writers, are Diane Ackerman on the opium of sunsets; Ursula K. Le Guin envisioning an alternative world in which human beings are not estranged from their planet; and Julia Butterfly Hill on weathering a fierce storm in the redwood tree where she lived for more than two years. Here, too, are poems, essays, stories, and journal entries by Emily Dickinson, Alice Walker, Terry Tempest Williams, Willa Cather, Gretel Erlich, Adrienne Rich, and others—each offering a vivid, eloquent response to the natural world.

This second edition of Sisters of the Earth is fully revised and updated with a new preface and nearly fifty new pieces, including new contributions by Louise Erdrich, Pam Houston, Zora Neale Hurston, Starhawk, Joy Williams, Kathleen Norris, Rita Dove, and Barbara Kingsolver.

Annotation

Sisters of the Earth introduce the reader to female perspectives on nature that complement Thoreau's, Muir's, and Edward Abbey's. The selections span a century and encompass the voices of a variety of women, with more than 90 poems, essays, stories and journal entries included in all.

Publishers Weekly

The voices of nearly 100 women--white, black, Native American--sing out in this luminous anthology, which spans centuries, genres and literary careers from Willa Cather's to Sue Hubbell's. The thread that binds together the poetry, short stories and essays collected here is the harmonious relationship between women and nature that is about ``caring rather than controlling,'' as editor Anderson indicates. In her poem ``My Help Is in the Mountainsic ,'' Nancy Wood ( Hollering Sun ) becomes part of the sun-warmed rock that soothes her ``earthly wounds.'' In a prose reflection, ``The Miracle of Renewal,'' Laura Lee Davidson is rejuvenated by a year spent in the Canadian woods in 1914, which provided her with a ``gallery of mind-pictures.'' Both Linda Hogan's essay, ``Walking,'' and Elizabeth Coatsworth's poem, ``On the Hills,'' seek and find continuity in nature, as well as a kinship with the other times and places that is evoked by it. Taste and sensitivity are evident throughout the volume, whether tacit as nocturnal solitude or vocal as a feline ``howl . . . for the flame of yellow moons'' in Judith Minty's poem, ``Why Do You Keep Those Cats?'' Anderson is a freelance writer and editor. QPB selection. (Apr.)

Biography

Lorraine Anderson is a freelance editor, writer, and teacher whose work focuses on encouraging a reciprocal relationship with nature. She served as lead editor of the college textbook Literature and the Environment: A Reader on Nature and Culture (1998) and collaborated with Thomas Edwards on the anthology At Home on This Earth: Two Centuries of U.S. Women's Nature Writing (2002). She holds a B.A in English from the University of Utah and an M.S. in creation sprituality from Naropa University, and lives in Davis, California.