Customer Reviews

Season of the Witch: Border Lines, Marginal Notes

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Gail's book is one of those that I would never want to place in a single category. It's a perfect blend of memoir, storytelling, commentary, and literary criticism. A good part of the work focuses on growing up white and female, and the challenges that come when someone of this background teaches literature by African Americans. She confronts many aspects of the collective history to which she belongs that are often unacknowledged or set aside. As a professor of literature, she seems to examine her own life, culture, and history as if it were one of her classroom texts - carefully, thoughtfully, and fully aware of the many opposing and contrasting views one could hold. I left the experience of reading this book feeling that I knew more about literature, my culture, and myself. There is much more within this book than a simple memoir, cultural commentary, or literary critique would offer - it's too beautiful and complex to belong in one of these categories.

Gail Griffin's book should have been published to greater fanfare. I suspect the major publishers were nervous (if indeed they saw this book at all) because, as another reviewer said, the book is difficult to categorize. A book of essays? Sounds dreary.

Yet Seasons is one of the liveliest, most insightful career books available. As a career coach, I frequently cite Gail's story of being asked to cover for a project-botching colleague. The man was paid a stipend but everyone knew he would do a bad job -- so the administration asked Gail to give up her summer research quarter (for which she was not paid) and do the job -- for no compensation of course!

As a former college professor myself, I can relate to Gail's stories of second-class treatment in academia. She triumphed and became a department head -- but the frustrations never go away completely. Male colleagues interrupt her office hours and her classes. I've had similar experiences.

Some of the best essays in the book deal with Gail's classroom experiences as she teaches literature to undergraduates. In fact, I think she would do better to put together a collection of those experiences and sell them as a book. Her discussion of The Color Purple and her analysis of a Rita Snow poem are worth the price of the book. She makes literature come alive and we see why she is such a gifted teacher.

If you can get a copy of this book, send it to anyone who's entering academia, especially women. And if you like literature and want to share Gail's exuberance, that's another reason to track down this book and buy it.