Lives in Transit: A Collection of Recent Russian Women's Writing

This anthology of contemporary prose and poetry reveals the thematic riches in Russian women's fiction during a turbulent era. The writers in this collection explore areas of human life that have stimulated impassioned debate among Western feminists, but provide a peculiarly Russian perspective on the material. Some of the topics dealt with are: motherhood, abortion, rape, adolescent sexual awakening, sibling bonding, women's nurturing function, paternity, the mythology of romantic love, the economics of sexuality, and women's struggle to integrate domestic and professional roles. Thematic and stylistic diversity mark the descriptions of essential female experiences by writers ranging from old to young, from well-known to previously unpublished. The texts offer Western readers fresh angles on familiar issues as they are tackled by women from another culture which has its own--often quite different--set of assumptions and values. Works by: A. Kalinina, N. Kozhevnikova, E. Makarova, T. Nabatnikova, V. Tokareva, L. Iunina, N. Katerli, D. Rubina, G. Shcherbakova, B. Ulanovskaia, M. Tsvetaeva, I. Polianskaia, L. Ulitskaia, S. Vasilenko, L. Vaneeva, A. Mass, M. Palei, R. Raevskaia, E. Ignatova, T. Shcherbina, O. Nikolaeva, E. Shvarts, I. Lisnianskaia, Z. Ezrokhi