Waveform

Twenty-First-Century Essays by Women

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Pub Date 15 Dec 2016 | Archive Date 17 Jan 2017

Description

Waveform celebrates the role of women essayists in contemporary literature. Historically, women have been instrumental in moving the essay to center stage, and Waveform continues this rich tradition, further expanding the dynamic genre’s boundaries and testing its edges. With thirty essays by thirty distinguished and diverse women writers, this carefully constructed anthology incorporates works ranging from the traditional to the experimental.

Waveform champions the diversity of women’s approaches to the structure ofthe essay—today a site of invention and innovation, with experiments in collage, fragments, segmentation, braids, triptychs, and diptychs. Focused on these explorations of form, Waveform is not wed to a fixed theme or even to women’s experiences per se. It is not driven by subject matter but highlights the writers’ interaction with all manner of subject and circumstance through style, voice, tone, and structure.

This anthology presents some of the women who are shaping the essay today, mapping an ever-changing landscape. It is designed to place essays recently written by women such as Roxane Gay, Cheryl Strayed, Margo Jefferson, Jaquira Diaz, and Eula Biss into the hands of those who have been waiting patiently for something they could equally claim as their own.

Contributors: Marcia Aldrich, Jocelyn Bartkevicius, Chelsea Biondolillo, Eula Biss, Barrie Jean Borich, Joy Castro, Meghan Daum, Jaquira Díaz, Laurie Lynn Drummond, Patricia Foster, Roxane Gay, Leslie Jamison, Margo Jefferson, Sonja Livingston, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, Brenda Miller, Michele Morano, Kyoko Mori, Bich Minh Nguyen, Adriana Paramo, Jericho Parms, Torrey Peters, Kristen Radtke, Wendy Rawlings, Cheryl Strayed, Dana Tommasino, Sarah Valentine, Neela Vaswani, Nicole Walker, Amy Wright

Waveform celebrates the role of women essayists in contemporary literature. Historically, women have been instrumental in moving the essay to center stage, and Waveform continues this rich tradition...


A Note From the Publisher

Marcia Aldrich is a professor of English at Michigan State University. She is the author of Girl Rearing: Memoir of a Girlhood Gone Astray and Companion to an Untold Story (Georgia), winner of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction. She is the former editor of the journal Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction.

Marcia Aldrich is a professor of English at Michigan State University. She is the author of Girl Rearing: Memoir of a Girlhood Gone Astray and Companion to an Untold Story (Georgia), winner of the...


Advance Praise

“Marcia Aldrich has done more than sample the bounty of brilliant women’s essays. Through Waveform, she stakes a claim for the significance of the essay in contemporary literature by focusing on women’s fusion of a singular voice, personal experience, and formal innovation. Waveform should come with a warning label, though: these essays are so compelling you’ll be tempted to read heedlessly and breathlessly through the collection. But beware. This work is potent. Each essay delivers the blow of the wave as it breaks, exposing the hungry wave rider to the churn and danger beneath the swells. A herald of a new field, fully realized, and a triumphant display of its power.”—Leigh Gilmore, author of Tainted Witness: Why We Doubt What Women Say About Their Lives

“Rich in unexpected detail, these essays refresh our sense of how women map the world. Readers join writers on journeys of self-discovery that disconcert as well as reward.”—Nancy K. Miller, author of Breathless: An American Girl in Paris

"The works largely explore an evocative, corporeal landscape with occasional forays into academic territory. . . . [T]here is plenty that stands out as wise. beautiful, and unforgettable."—Publishers Weekly

"Aldrich's collection not only rides the 'new wave' in nonfiction essay writing with bravura, intelligence, and sensitivity. It also reveals the depth and vastness of the contemporary female literary ocean that produced it. . . . Eclectic and always engaging"—Kirkus Reviews

"This collection offers something for every reader, whether one seeks the calm of a contemplative voice or the catharsis of anger. . . . It's all here, just as it should be: birth, death, sex, longing, regret, anger, love."—Booklist

“Marcia Aldrich has done more than sample the bounty of brilliant women’s essays. Through Waveform, she stakes a claim for the significance of the essay in contemporary literature by focusing on...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780820350219
PRICE $29.95 (USD)

Average rating from 19 members


Featured Reviews

In the preface to Waveform, the editor writes, "This book is not a memorial. Although we need to remember the women writers who have come before, this book is about women writing essays now. The wave is an image that catches the sense and motion that define the current movement, its fluidity and momentum." This essay certainly has momentum-- so much, in fact, that I would sit down to peruse just one essay and find myself dragged into the current of two or three.

A few things to appreciate about the collection in general. First, there is a wide variety of form here. As an educator, I value this and if I find a need to bring in an essay collection in the future for a course, you can bet I'll be looking to this one. Some essays are sandwiched with two images, some forms are restrictive (one for every letter of the alphabet), while some are based around found words (such as the heartbreaking "Transgender Day of Remembrance.") The variety of forms kept me reading.

The variety of stories here, too, showed a wide range of women's experiences-- yes, essays about motherhood, sexual violence, and girls growing up, but also essays about gun ownership, race, and leaving. Some of the highlights for me in this collection were "Portrait of a Family: Crooked and Straight" by Wendy Rawlings, "Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain" by Leslie Jamison, "The Girl, The Cop, and I" by Laurie Lynn Drummond, and "Girl Hood: On (Not) Finding Yourself in Books" by Jaquira Diaz.

Honestly, many of these essays touched me deeply, and I felt myself wanting to be a fly on the wall during the meeting at AWP a few years ago when this project (according to the preface) was first envisioned. It's a fine collection, and one I highly recommend.

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By women, for women. Just what the doctor ordered.

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A very strong collection of diverse 21st century voices. Each essay is unique though many share common ground on issues of the body, spiritual and physical autonomy, life choices, love, and more. A necessary anthology for anyone who wants to better understand the experiences of women today.

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I received a free electronic copy of this collection from Netgalley, editor Marcia Aldrich, and University of Georgia Press. Thank you all, for sharing your hard work with me.

This collection of short stories is a fast read that will have your quiet time filled with the thought of new perspectives. There was not a story in here that did not require time to absorb and bend your brain around. I was very impressed, and found a couple of new authors to add to my list of must reads. Thank you!

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<i>Waveform</i> is a collection of thirty essays by women writers. Although these aren't all necessarily your typical version of the essay—some follow traditional form while other present their stories in an array of non-traditional forms. This speaks to the diversity of the women included in this collection.

The essays cover a wide range of topics, from things you would expect from specifically women writers such as the experience of childbirth, understand relationships, etc., and to other topics that aren't specifically related to women, but provide just as much thought-provoking stimuli while absorbing each essay. Many of the topics are serious, though they don't all leave the reader with a sense of dread at the end. More often than not, these essays explore suffering in a way that acknowledges it, tries to understand its existence, and moves on from there.

If you enjoy reading essays and enjoy the work of women writers, this collection is for you.

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this is a phenomenal collection of essays & I am so glad I got to read it.

overall I really enjoyed reading all essays in this collection - which rarely happens with me - and I also noted down the names of a number of the contributors as I was reading because I was loving their essays so much that I wanted to read something more by them.

if you enjoy reading essays or have enjoyed the work of some of these contributors in the past then this is definitely the book for you & if you haven't read many essay collections but want to pick one up I encourage you to read this one because there is such a wide array of material in this one & I'm sure something will stand out to you.

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