Creating Safe Space

An anthology of literary essays focusing on the ways in which sexual, emotional, physical, racial, and other forms of violence have affected women artists' imaginations.

Creating Safe Space: Violence and Women's Writing defines the role of women's writing in the face of violence and suggests the degree to which violence has affected women from diverse periods, places, and social backgrounds. The book examines the ways in which women use their writing to redefine their experiences of abuse, to give themselves a voice in order to break the silence imposed on women in patriarchal society, and to start challenging and changing a culture that objectifies, degrades, and destroys women.

The women discussed in the book include established authors, such as Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Charlotte Bronte, as well as contemporary artists including Anne Rice and Joy Kogawa.

A number of essays illuminate ways in which writing can be employed in women's workshops and college classrooms. They bridge the interdisciplinary distances among the fields of literary criticism, creative writing, psychology, sociology, social welfare, history, journalism, education, and others in which feminist scholars have worked to draw public attention to, and provide solutions to, the various kinds of abuse women endure.