Crossing Boundaries: An International Anthology of Women's Experiences in Sport [Paperback]

Susan Bandy (Author), Anne Darden (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Crossing Boundaries fills a huge void. Through poetry, essays, and stories, it celebrates the broad spectrum of the female athletic experience, beautifully capturing the joy, frustration, and complexity that has long been ignored in American literature."
Joan Ryan -- San Francisco Chronicle
Author of Little Girls in Pretty Boxes

"This wide-ranging anthology will make readers reconsider their casual assumptions about both sport and women's experiences. Bandy and Darden have assembled an indispensable addition to the literature of sport."
Michael Oriard -- Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture
Oregon State University

Product Description

Crossing Boundaries is the first anthology of its kind—international in scope, cross-cultural in context, and uniquely female in content. The collection includes poetry, short stories, prose memoirs, dramas, and journalistic works by women from over twenty countries, including such celebrated contemporary authors as Margaret Atwood, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Wislawa Szymborska, and Joyce Carol Oates. The female voices that resonate through these works are often angular, raging, and knowing; at other times they are soft, melodic, peaceful, and yearning. Characters are old, young, spectators, fans, professional athletes, school girl competitors; they’re in the bleachers, along the Charles River, in the locker room, and on and off the court.

Crossing Boundaries is a journey to the center of female identity. The themes that emerge have long been addressed in women’s literature but routinely neglected by literary critics. The collective female voices resound with the impulse to be free, to be liberated from the confining expectations of others and the control that those expectations exert over the minds and bodies of women. These voices ask the question—sometimes in a shout, sometimes in a whisper—what does sport have to do with the female experience, with my experience?

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Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Human Kinetics; 1 edition (May 19, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0736000887
• ISBN-13: 978-0736000888
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,034,045 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb book on a timely theme, August 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Crossing Boundaries: An International Anthology of Women's Experiences in Sport (Paperback)

The jacket description of this remarkable collection is exactly on target, "the first anthology of its kind, international in scope, cross-cultural in context, and uniquely female in content." While the subject is women in sport and all the contributiors women, the book is as much for men as for women. One group in particular who would be well served by the experience and insight shared in this book is fathers of daughters increasingly involved in sports and play at practically every age. Women in sports are here to stay and the numbers will grow in spite of the popularity of the male "monster sports," football, baseball, and basketball which, as forms of entertainment and business, increasingly exhibit the shadow side of sport formerly monopolized by professional wrestling. Women in sport is a different story, a story of grace and beauty, courage and honor, disappointment and hope, pretty much what William Faulkner called the old verities which explains perhaps why the subject has attracted some of the best writers and poets of our time, represented here in abundance, Diane Ackerman, Margaret Atwood, Maxine Kumin, Denise Levertov, Beryl Markham, Carson McCullers, Joyce Carol Oates, Sharon Olds, Marge Piercy, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, May Sarton, Anne Sexton, Jean Rhys, among others. One could look a long time to find a book of any kind on any subject with as many all-star contributors. The boundaries crossed in this book are cultural and national but more importantly the main boundary crossed is that of our misperceptions of women in the world of sport. Like all good writing, this book makes us see, that is, makes us more conscious, in this case more conscious of the sense of joy and discovery that sport can still bring.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Women in sports and lovers of poetry, this is FOR YOU!, June 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Crossing Boundaries: An International Anthology of Women's Experiences in Sport (Paperback)

In this anthology, Bandy breaks down the poems into sections with titles appropriate to their content. Though the book focuses on the rewards, happiness, and joy involved in the life of a female athlete, it also reveals the not-so-rewarding, happy, or joyful moments which accompany this life. The target audience for this book, then, would seem to be the mature female athlete; however, as a 19-year-old male college student majoring in English literature, I found the peotry and prose enthralling and vivid. The names Joyce Carol Oates, Sylvia Plath, and many other wonderful poets and writers line the pages. This is truly one of the best anthologies that I've ever had the privaledge of reading and I hope that you--as a lover of poetry or as a female athlete wondering whether or not you're the only one feeling the way you do--will enjoy this wonderful piece of work in the same way I have.