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Recognized from an early age as a poet of remarkable ability, the writer who was to become known as Gabriela Mistral was the first Latin American woman to be awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize, in 1945. Composed of archival footage and commentary from scholars and friends who discuss the personal events that affected her life and infused her work with its themes of tragic love and unfulfilled maternal love, this program provides an in-depth portrait...
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English
Description
Has feminist literature gone mainstream? And what place do women's presses have in society as it is today? This program offers valuable insights but no consensus as Gloria Steinem; Germaine Greer; Naomi Wolf; Lynn Crosbie, editor of Click: Becoming Feminists; Virago Press' Lennie Goodings; and Althea Prince, of Women's Press, Canada's oldest feminist publishing house, address these and other issues. Additional topics include personal "click" moments,...
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Español
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As a child of the Spanish Civil War and the repressive post-war era, Carmen Martin Gaite found kindred spirits among the Madrid literati, led by her future husband Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio, during the '50s. In her long and uninterrupted literary career, Gaite chose socially critical topics such as the relationship between the sexes and the differences between provincial and city life. Using modes of expression that became increasingly more personal...
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Español
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Raised within the socially restrictive mores of a transient middle-class family and troubled with a stammering problem, Ana Maria Matute took refuge in literature. At 17, she began to use her experiences to probe the themes of lost childhood, injustice, and the lives of the marginalized. She soon developed a fresh prose style that deftly blended fantasy and realism, revitalizing the mid-20th-century Spanish literary scene. This landmark program features...
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English
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Illustrated with clips from movie and television adaptations of her novels, this program takes a visually rich approach to understanding the woman behind such classics as Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. An extensive biographical and psychological profile of the author provides insight into what life was like for a woman in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Filmed at key locations, including Bath and Austen's later home in Chawton,...
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English
Description
They come from diverse backgrounds and represent a cross-section of global culture, yet they all share a passion for the written word. In this documentary, authors Gloria Steinem, Doris Lessing, Amy Tan, Isabel Allende, Bharati Mukherjee, Harriet Doerr, June Jordan, and Mona Simpson speak out about their personal lives and openly share their thoughts and feelings on the themes of childhood; love, marriage, and children; starting out as writers; the...
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English
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Surveying the uncompromising life and career of the erstwhile Amandine Aurore-Lucie Dupin, this program familiarizes viewers with her literary output, political beliefs, and the widely varied circles she inhabited. Beginning with her birth in Paris, the film describes Sand's semi-aristocratic upbringing, stifling marriage, turbulent romances, creative evolution, and visionary proto-feminist stance. Sand's memoir excerpts and artworks are featured;...
8) Zoe Valdes
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Español
Description
Born in Cuba to Chinese parents, award-winning novelist Zoe Valdes has achieved worldwide recognition for portraying the struggles and dreams of women. This program highlights her upbringing, education, and influences, as well as examining several of her most important books, including La Hija del Embajador and Te Di La Vida Entera.
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English
Description
This moving dramatization of Tillie Olsen's frequently anthologized "I Stand Here Ironing" is an unvarnished exploration of an impoverished single mother's ambivalence toward her worth as a parent and her 19-year-old daughter's future. Rich in subtext, the highly metaphorical story-penned in a stark and dramatic fashion devoid of cliche and sentimentality-raises important questions about individual identity, the role of women in society, the effects...
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English
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Her father was philosopher William Godwin. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was feminism's founder. By pedigree and experience, Mary Shelley was uncannily equipped to write the gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein. This program offers a fresh exploration of her novel, focusing on how Shelley's personal life influenced the book and mirrored it afterwards. Along with reenactments of scenes from her classic and dramatizations of her life, the program draws...
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English
Description
Flannery O'Connor is often likened to Faulkner for her portrayal of the character and lifestyle of the South, Kafka for her fascination with the bizarre, and Beckett for her dark humor-comparisons that underscore the fact that her voice has a unique place in the canon of American literature. This program provides a biographical sketch of O'Connor that illuminates her efforts to come to terms with what she perceived as the fundamental absurdity of...
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English
Description
When Maxine Hong Kingston was growing up in California, she listened to her parents' stories and memories of their native China. In her highly acclaimed memoirs, The Woman Warrior and China Men, she linked those tales of tradition to the story of her own American experience, blending childhood memory, meditation, and magic. They are the most widely taught books by a living American author on college campuses today. In this program with Bill Moyers,...
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English
Description
In this compelling program, world-renowned author Toni Morrison candidly answers questions regarding how she became a writer, the pain of empathizing with her characters, the sensual nature of her novels, and how it felt to win the Nobel Prize. In addition, she pulls no punches discussing how she first became aware of her racial otherness, how writing for a black audience has kept her work from becoming derivative, the societal uses of racism, and...
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English
Description
What were Alice Walker's motivations in writing "Everyday Use"? In this program, the author discusses her short story with her official biographer, Evelyn C. White. Over the course of the interview, Walker talks about the autobiographical aspects of the story, the significance of quilting to African-American women, the perception of class differences, and the important life lessons she wished to explore.
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English
Description
Isabel Allende, the most recent Latin American novelist to bestride the world literary stage-and the first Latin American woman-describes the emotions that inform her fiction and the events that set them in motion. Niece of the deposed (and presumably assassinated) Chilean Marxist president Salvador Allende, she fled Chile in terror and blossomed in exile to write of the love, hate, and revenge that shape the lives of people she knew, or dreamt about:...
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English
Description
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. So spoke Virginia Woolf in 1929 as she discussed the problems of the writer and of women in general. Woolf's talk represents perhaps the most persuasive of all her writings on liberty, literature, and the role of women in her society. Woolf spoke not only about writing, but about writing as a woman-speaking in an age when women were deprived of virtually every possibility of...
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English
Description
Surveying some of the most under-appreciated art of the 20th century, this program documents a groundbreaking exhibit of work by Latin American women at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The video opens up the world of these bold and sensitive visionaries, illuminating their accomplishments, their impact on artists outside their own countries, and the relationship between cultural and artistic identity. Featuring the work of legendary painters Frida Kahlo...
18) Rosa Regas
Language
Catalan
Description
Born in Barcelona, Rosa Regas has founded two publishing houses and two magazines, as well as written several award-winning novels. In this extended interview, the novelist and journalist discusses several of her books, including Azul, Luna Lunera, and Le Cancion de Dorotea.
19) Alice Walker
Language
English
Description
Being black, being a woman, and being a writer is just the most wonderful challenge. It's like having three eyes, three hearts, rather than one, says the author of The Color Purple in this profile, as she relives her journey from an impoverished childhood in rural Georgia to the peace and creativity of her present life in northern California. Alice Walker describes how the Civil Rights movement transformed her life, defines her concept of "womanism,"...
Language
English
Description
Authors Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasrin know about severe censorship firsthand. In this program, Suanne Kelman, of Ryerson University, opens the subject of censoring in literature using Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lady Chatterley's Lover, The Diviners, and the Harry Potter series-all banned at one time or another or under threat of banning-as examples. Expanding on the theme, Rushdie (The Satanic Verses) then talks about fundamentalist...