Sisters of the Earth: Women's Prose and Poetry About Nature [Paperback]

Lorraine Anderson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 9, 1991

This book introduces us to female perspectives on nature. Over 90 selections, from Emily Dickinson to Alice Walker, span a century and encompass the voices of a variety of women--some known for their writing on nature, and several outstanding new voices

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Women have been writing, and writing very well, about nature for hundreds of years, but, as in so many other fields, their contributions were overlooked and undervalued until recently. Lorraine Anderson's anthology Sisters of the Earth is just the remedy. In it, Anderson gathers writing on nature from a range of authors, among them the relatively familiar Sally Carrighar, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Ann Zwinger, Rachel Carson, and Ursula Le Guin and younger contemporaries like Pat Mora, Terry Tempest Williams, Luci Tapahonso, and Joy Harjo. Anderson showcases essays, fiction, and poetry in roughly equal measure, and her intelligent notes and introduction add much to this generous--and long overdue, and most welcome--collection.

From Publishers Weekly

The voices of nearly 100 women--white, black, Native American--sing out in this luminous anthology, which spans centuries, genres and literary careers from Willa Cather's to Sue Hubbell's. The thread that binds together the poetry, short stories and essays collected here is the harmonious relationship between women and nature that is about "caring rather than controlling," as editor Anderson indicates. In her poem "My Help Is in the Mountainsic ," Nancy Wood ( Hollering Sun ) becomes part of the sun-warmed rock that soothes her "earthly wounds." In a prose reflection, "The Miracle of Renewal," Laura Lee Davidson is rejuvenated by a year spent in the Canadian woods in 1914, which provided her with a "gallery of mind-pictures." Both Linda Hogan's essay, "Walking," and Elizabeth Coatsworth's poem, "On the Hills," seek and find continuity in nature, as well as a kinship with the other times and places that is evoked by it. Taste and sensitivity are evident throughout the volume, whether tacit as nocturnal solitude or vocal as a feline "howl . . . for the flame of yellow moons" in Judith Minty's poem, "Why Do You Keep Those Cats?" Anderson is a freelance writer and editor. QPB selection.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st edition (April 9, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679733825
• ISBN-13: 978-0679733829
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,360,862 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lorraine Anderson (b. 1952) grew up on a free-range chicken ranch in Cupertino, California, in the days when the Santa Clara Valley was still known as the Valley of Heart's Delight. (It's now known as Silicon Valley.) She freelances as a writer and editor and teaches writing as an adjunct professor at Linn-Benton Community College in Corvallis, Oregon.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books I have ever read, July 9, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Sisters of the Earth: Women's Prose and Poetry About Nature (Paperback)

Sisters of the Earth is one of the best books I have ever read. It is a collection of stories on woman's relationship to the earth. Each short piece is written by a woman from the United States from any time in our history - about some connection she has with the earth. I've turned down so many pages in this book and put in little post-it notes saying "great!". After reading one of the stories a new author's work is now available to me. I give this book to others as a gift all the time. The stories themselves are personal reflections of nature that speak softly to me of the wonders I am surrounded by and often fail to notice. These stories remind me of where I really live and how powerful my connection is to the earth. I would love to see a second volume by Lorraine Anderson on this topic, she has selected well. I have also read Cries of the Spirit, also a book about woman's connection to the earth and found it very good also.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Something for Everyone, June 29, 2002

By 

Caroline Rose (Palo Alto, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sisters of the Earth: Women's Prose and Poetry About Nature (Paperback)

I found a lot more than I'd expected in this book. The editor obviously put a lot of thought into her selection of authors and passages from their works. It seemed to me as if these were the passages I would have marked for rereading had I read those works myself. Pretty much every selection struck me as being beautifully inspirational, poetic, or otherwise moving. I'd forgotten how much simply reading about nature can do to lift and heal the spirit. I also learned a lot: I was unaware that so many women have been writing about nature for so many years -- and it was sobering to realize that much of what the earlier authors wrote about no longer exists in our world today.

The author bios themselves make for fascinating reading. (You can't help but wonder how your own life would be summed up in a paragraph or two.) And of course, as I'd expect from any good anthology, this collection inspired me to add quite a few items to my "to-read" list. The nearly 40-page bibliography includes very helpful summaries, and lists not just the sources of this anthology's selections but many other works as well.

Whatever you might expect from Sisters of the Earth, I doubt you'll be disappointed. There should be something in it for everyone -- and it's a pretty book that would make a great gift.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Anthology of short bits by women naturalists, February 20, 2004

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sisters of the Earth: Women's Prose and Poetry About Nature (Paperback)

Naturalists is perhaps too narrow a word choice for the one hundred contributors to this anthology; I suspect only a few would use that word when describing themselves. Their ages span more than a century, so the style of writing varies widely, but each has something quite special to share with a reader looking for a few moments of luminousness or quiet revelation in the midst of a busy day.
Here's one of my favorite bits, and I'm paraphrasing: Men climb mountains to conquer them; women climb mountains to go deeper within themselves, to feel a oneness with nature. When I read that, I lifted my eyes from the page, stared at the horizon and thought how much more poetic and truthful that is than the usual Mars/Venus type of comparison.
Contributors range from regionalist Sarah Orne Jewett to internationalist Diane Ackerman; there are African Americans, Native Americans, Jews, Catholics, mystics, and poets among this mix, with plenty of boundary crossing.
Very lovely. Not, I believe, a book meant to be read cover to cover. Rather, let it rest beside your favorite reading chair or at your bedside, and read a few entries now and then at random. I think you'll be charmed, as I was.