An Angle of vision: women writers on their poor and working-class roots

Abstract

Lorraine Lopez, ed. An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on Their Poor and WorkingClass Roots. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan 2009. 203 pp.This is an admirable, if not entirely successful attempt by a Latina writer assemble a collection of memoirs of women writers who have through education crossed class borders become successful writers whose works give voice other women from poor and/or working-class backgrounds. The editor of this anthology has chosen for inclusion writers who, in main, were driven by writing to reach beyond their beginnings and inspire others who grew up in poor or working-class homes (3). Each contributor is carefully identified at close of book by a useful bio-bibliographical sketch: Dorothy Allison, Joy Castro, Lisa D. Chavez, Mary Childers, Sandra Cisneros, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Teresa Dovalpage, Maureen Gibbon, Dwonna Goldstone, Joy Harjo, Lorraine M. Lopez, Karen Salyer McElmurray, Amelia Maria de la Luz Montes, Bich Minh Nguyen, Judy Owens, Lynn Pruett, Heather Sellers, and Angela Threatt. In preface of anthology, Lopez offers a clear explanation of purpose of book: ... extend inspiration and direction other women trapped... in crosshairs between desperation and hopelessness (4). Lopez is artistically adept at exploring many layers of theme of the divided self, examining pull between dominant societal values and competing familial pride and dissension. A number of contributors share similar backgrounds of poverty, single motherhood, challenges in educational pursuits, and limiting effects of class that persist despite improved economical and educational conditions.The number and diversity of angles of vision treated in this anthology makes a review of all of essays/memoirs impossible. Hence, we will limit our discussion those essays in which personal, political, and emotional realities and ramifications of poverty are more in evidence than in other essays in book.In collection's first essay, Dorothy Allison, born in 1949 a fifteen-yearold unwed mother and presently living in Northern California, confesses lasting effects of being born poor. Writing for her is cathartic, and her essay outlines beginning of her writing and motivation for her personal stories. Most important for her is not craft of writing, rather emotions she wants her evoke, realizations she wants her readers encounter and undergo such as grief, anger, and change. Alison remarks: Sometimes I was so angry, I wrote stop my own rage (13). The stubborn girls of her mean stories are Southerners and offspring of working class parents who stubbornly endure racist, classist, homophobic, and sexist insults.The essay entitled Queen for a Day by Amelia Maria de la Luz Montes, offers a critical perspective on one of television's earliest versions of reality television, Queen for a Day, audience members of which are from poor, working class backgrounds with sad and sometimes tragic stories. The backtracking method Montes uses in this essay is a very effective tool, as it gives reader and her a chance pinpoint details in her past that correspond her strengths rather than her personal hardships and disappointments. Montes seeks about her mother from DVDs of this television game show whose contestants tell their sad and tragic in hopes that theirs will be judged saddest and one warranting jeweled crown and throne. The prospect of Montes discovering about her mother quickly disappears when Montes views footage of show where her mom is called stage and instead of truth her mom creates a facade, not surprising Montes or reader since No digas was her mother's favorite phrase, don't tell anyone truth, what's really happening. You want put your 'best face' out in public (24). Initially, Montes takes pride in telling a college classmate about her mother's appearance on show. …