Voice of Her Own: Women and the Journal Writing Journey
Part how-to, part historical account, literary scholar Schiwy's work validates women's need to keep a journal and, as such, their need to express emotions. "Journal writing is a way of paying close attention to our lives," she writes. From preteen diaries to unsent letters and invented dialogs, women record their lives, and Schiwy allows the voyeuristic pleasure of reading the results, from Anais Nin's deep introspection to a mother coping with life. For women who want to keep a journal but don't know how to start, Schiwy's appendixes are leaps into self-actualization. In the tradition of Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones (Shambhala, 1986), Schiwy gives writers the ever-needed boost of self-confidence: her goal is to encourage "women to take themselves and other women seriously in their own right." Read better in pieces, her work is a keeper. Recommended for public libraries.?Penny L. Piva, Univ. of Massachusetts, DartmouthCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.