Women Writers
"To Be a Woman and a Writer" (excerpt)  &  Recommended Reading List

"To Be a Woman and a Writer"
by Cora Agatucci
excerpts from Women's Studies 102 guest presentation,
including list of women writers & works discussed
29 May 2002, Central Oregon Community College

Recommended Reading List
(a list in progress . . . created  by Stacey Donohue, Sept. 2001)

Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)

Isabel Allende (Chilean writer of magical realism novels such as House of the Spirits)
Hum 299 student web site:  

Julia Alvarez (Dominican Republic immigrant novelist including How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and Yo!)

Maya Angelou (any of her autobiographies and her poetry, especially I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings)

Margaret Atwood (Canadian writer; I recommend The Handmaid’s Tale or any of her novels, essays, poetry)
See also Cora's Eng 104 Author Links (1): Atwood
http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng104/authors1.htm 

Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice  or any of her novels) 

Anne Bradstreet (18th Century poet, one of the first published women poets in the US)

Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre)

Emily Bronte (1818-1848) - Wuthering Heights (1847) 
Wuthering Heights Study Guide (ENG 103 & ENG 109, Cora Agatucci)
http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng103/bronte.htm  

Gwendolyn Brooks (African American poet) 

Willa Cather (My Antonia, O, Pioneers! or any of her novels and short stories)
See also Cora's Eng 104 Author Links (1): Cather
http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng104/authors1.htm 

Sandra Cisneros (Mexican American poet, and author of House on Mango Street  and Woman Hollering Creek)
See also Cora's Eng 104 Author Links (1): Cisneros
http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng104/authors1.htm 

Kate Chopin (The Awakening  and short stories)
See also Cora's Eng 104 Author Links (1): Chopin
http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng104/authors1.htm 

Amanda Cross (mystery writer---mysteries tend to take place in a college setting with a woman detective)

Maria Cummings (The Lamplighter– 19th century novel may be out of print)

Tsitsi Dangarembga ~ Nervous Conditions 
See also Cora's  African Authors: Tsitsi Dangarembga & Nervous Conditions:
http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/dangarembga.htm 

Rebecca Harding Davis (“Life in the Iron Mills” –early story about the effect of 
Industrialization on the human soul)

Emily Dickinson (19th Century poet)

Louise Erdrich (“Love Medicine” and any of her novels; most take place on the 
Chippewa Indian Reservation)
See also Cora's Eng 104 Author Links (1): Erdrich
http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng104/authors1.htm
Louise Erdrich, Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color
http://voices.cla.umn.edu/authors/LouiseErdrich.html 

Penelope Fitzgerald

Hannah Foster (18th century writer of “The Coquette” (The Flirt)…similar story to 
“The Scarlet Letter” written 50 years later)

Margaret Fuller (19th Century essayist, feminist, travel writer)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (“The Yellow Wall paper” and “Herland” –the latter is a 
Feminist utopian novel)

Nadine Gordimer (white South African novelist)

Mary Gordon (her early novels are about the effects of an orthodox Irish-
Catholic background on women (i.e. “Final Payments” and “In the 
Company of Women”) and her later novels are about being a 
Woman and an artist (“Men and Angels” and “Spending”)

Lorraine Hansberry (African American playwright, “A Raisin in the Sun”)

Lillian Hellman (20th C. playwright, “The Children’s Hour” and also wrote memoirs 
such as “Pentimento”—she was a major figure during the McCarthy era; 
also had a long term relationship with noir writer Dashiell Hammet)

Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (“Life Among the Paiute”—Native American writer)

Zora Neale Hurston (“Their Eyes Were Watching God”—Harlem Renaissance 
Writer)

Shirley Jackson (earlier Stephen King-type writer of short stories such as “The 
Lottery”)

Harriet Jacobs (wrote the slave narrative “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”—in 
the style of of 19th Century women’s literature)

Sarah Orne Jewett (Major figure in local color/realistic fiction in the 19th century, 
author of short stories and the novel “In the Country of Pointed
Firs”)

Maxine Hong Kingston (Asian American writer of novels such as “Woman 
Warrior”)

Jamaica Kincaid (b. 1949; Antigua)
Annie John
Jamaica Kincaid, Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color
 http://voices.cla.umn.edu/authors/jamaicakincaid.html 

Nella Larsen (Harlem Renaissance writer of “Passing”---the story of a black 
Woman who ‘passes’ as white—and “Quicksand”)

Ursula LeGuin (Oregonian science fiction writer)

Doris Lessing (author of one of the 1960s/70s feminist novels, “The Golden 
Notebook”)

Katherine Mansfield (British short story writer)

Bobbie Ann Mason (Kentuckian short story writer—“Shiloh” is a favorite. She also
Wrote “In Country”, a novel about a girl growing up with her uncle, a 
Vietnam Vet).

Mary McCarthy (Famous for her “flying diaphragm scene” in “The Group”, also 
For other novels and short stories about the 1940s intellectual, urban 
Woman).

Carson McCullers (“Member of the Wedding” and other short novels that take
place in the southeast)

Edna St. Vincent Millay (20th century poet)

Marianne Moore (20th century poet)

Toni Morrison (Pulitzer Prize & Nobel Prize winning novelist: “The Bluest Eye”; “Beloved” and
“Sula” are my favorites)
Beloved Study Guide, by Jim Hawes and Wendy Weber (WR 316/ENG 339 Term Project, Spring 2002):
http://www.cocc.edu/beloved/ 
The Bluest Eye Project, by Daryl Ivie (WR 316/ENG 390 Term Project, Spring 2002):
http://www.cocc.edu/daryli/TermProject/index.html 

Bharati Mukherjee (East Indian-American writer of short stories on the immigrant 
Experience)

Gloria Naylor (author of “Women of Brewster Place” and “Mama Day”)

Joyce Carol Oates (prolific author of dozens of novels, short stories and essays.
Her novels tend to depict the family or individual in crisis)

Flannery O'Connor (Southern writer of short fiction—usually highly symbolic. The 
main theme of her work is the foolishness of self-deception, and the lack 
of faith she found accompanying this self-deception)

Tillie Olsen (activist, working class writer of short stories like “I Stand Here 
Ironing” and a collection of essays I love called “Silences”)

Grace Paley (writer of short stories such as “A Conversation With My Father”)

Dorothy Parker (1940s writer for New Yorker magazine—poetry like “Men don’t 
Make passes at girls who where glasses”---and fiction. Movie based on 
Her life is excellent: “Dorothy Parker and the Round Table” starring 
Jennifer Jason Leigh)

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (novel about a woman doctor, “Dr Zay”—1882)

Marge Piercy (feminist poet and novelist. “The Women’s Room” depicts the 
changes in the lives of women during the height of the women’s movement in the 70s; “Women on the Edge of Time” is a science fiction novel on a similar theme).

Sylvia Plath (1950s poet and author of “The Bell Jar”, semi autobiographical work 
on being a young writer suffering from depression)

Katherine Anne Porter (author of many short stories and the novel “Ship of 
Fools”)

Adrienne Rich (feminist poet and essayist, best collections are “Of Women Born”-
About being a mother; and “On Lies, Secrets and Silences”)

Mary Rowlandson (17th century writer of one of the early captivity stories---also 
used as a justification for the annihilation of the northeast Native
Americans)

Susanna Rowson (author of the 1791 novel “Charlotte Temple” about a woman 
tempted by a man)

Mary Anne Sadlier (Irish American writer of novels warning immigrants about the 
dangers of American life, such as “Bessy Conway; or, The Irish Girl in 
America”..1861 novel available online)

Anne Sexton (feminist poet)

Mary Shelley (author of “Frankenstein”)

Bapsi Sidhwa (Pakistani author of "Cracking India")

Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna author of “Ceremony”) 

Carol --- (Stone Diaries) Fix this Cora!!

Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”)

Amy Tan (author of “The Joy Luck Club” and “The Kitchen God’s Wife”) 

Alice Walker (author of “The Color Purple” and other novels, stories, poems. Her
best collection of essays is “In Search of Her Mother’s Garden”) 

Edith Wharton (author of works depicting the restrictive world of the upper class 
during the turn of the century in such works as “The Age of Innocence” and “House of Mirth”; also wrote “Ethan Frome”)

Phyllis Wheatley (18th century African American poet)

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941, U.K.)
--A Room of One's Own first published in 1929, based on 1928 lectures on "Women and Fiction" )
--Professions for Women  (an essay first published posthumously in 1942).  Rpt. The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English.  Eds. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar.  New York: W. W. Norton, 1985.  [Excerpt read is from p. 1385]

Anzia Yezierska (Polish-Jewish immigrant author of “Breadgivers”—a semi 
autobiographical depiction of her life)

Women's Studies Home Page
Humanities Instructional Resources
Humanities Dept Home Page
Women Writers: Recommended Reading List
URL of this page:  http://www.cocc.edu/humanities/courses/ws/readinglist.html
Last updated: 24 July 2002
Maintained by Stacey Donohue: sdonohue@cocc.edu  
with contributions by Cora Agatucci