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Cauldron of Changes: Feminist Spirituality in Fantastic Fiction

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Using literary studies on feminist spirituality such as Carol Christ's Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest (1980) as a springboard, author Janice C. Crosby successfully delves deeper into issues of spirituality in American women's fiction in her examination of literary critics and feminist spirituality theorists in Cauldron of Changes: Feminist Spirituality in Fantastic Fiction. Analysis of these hypertextual inquiries is necessary, according to Crosby, if we are to develop a better understanding of the nature of spirituality in feminist fiction versus the spirituality of non-feminist fiction. Through considering thematic patterns and, to a degree, character analysis as well, Crosby further looks at the uniquely visceral components of feminist fantastic fiction. Her special attention to popular fiction, which include texts by Alice Walker, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, and Marion Zimmer Bradley, helps to illuminate her argument that feminist spirituality is a visible and important component of popular culture, and its influences are therefore more important than theorists of fantastic fiction have previously believed. Janice C. Crosby has eloquently brought the contributions of less-examined writers who have until now been dismissed because of their feminist elements, and she has brought them into the larger realm of discourse on fantastic fiction and into positions of literary importance within that realm that they deserve. The above review was originally written for "Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal," a publication of the Claremont Colleges.