Choice 评论
Johnson (history, Central Missouri State Univ.) explores such motifs as entrapment, "patriarchal violence," female communication, and "ethical self-governance" by focusing on the rhetorical strategies and autobiographical features of Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Walker's The Color Purple. The author concludes that a study of "the authorial and narrative voices" in these books (and in additional texts by Hurston and Walker) "reveals not only revolutionary revisions within a literary tradition, but also the historical development of consciousness and voice among African American women writers." Johnson finds "resistance to domination" in the works of all three authors, but she argues that Jacobs's Linda Brent and Hurston's Janie Crawford do not give "active voice to their protests in the manner of Alice Walker's protagonists"; and only Walker "offers the possibilities of bridging both racial and gender gaps." Reference to John Lowe's Jump at the Sun: Zora Neale Hurston's Cosmic Comedy (CH, Jul'95) and other scholarly studies of the past five years would have enhanced Johnson's discussion of these major works of American literature. Nonetheless, recommended for academic libraries, upper-division undergraduate level through faculty. J. W. Hall University of Mississippi