322 Book Reviews

WINESINTHE~ILDERNESS: PLAYSBYAFRICANAMERICAN WOMEN FROM THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE TO THE PRESENT, edited and compiled by Elizabeth Brown-Guil- 10~. (Contributions in Afro-American Studies, 135), 251 pages. Greenwood Press Inc., Westport, CT, 1990. Paper, US $12.95.

Playwright Elizabeth Brown-Guillory, Associate Profes- sor of English at Houston University, borrows the title of her book from an Alice Childress play, Wine in the Wil- derness, written and set in Harlem in the 196Os, in which a condescending black artist, Bill Jameson, comes to un- derstand that his vision of Mother Africa does not accu- rately represent the struggling black woman in America who triumphs over oppression “because of a strong spirit of survival” and a sense of spirituality “inextricably linked to an African heritage” (p. 106). Moving through Brown- Guillory’s anthology, one discovers the aptness of her ti- tle, because a dominant and recurring theme in all 13 plays by nine playwrights is the spirit of strength and spirituality demanded of and demonstrated by black women struggling to define their place in a society riddled with sexism, racism, classism, and violence both inside and outside the black community.

The plays included in this anthology represent seven decades of black female vision, beginning with the 1920s and concluding with the 1980s. Brown-Guillory includes works by Marita Bonner (1899-1971), Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880-1966), Eulalie Spence (1894-1981), May Miller (1899-1966), Shirley Graham (1896-1977), Alice Childress (1920- ), Sonia Sanchez (1934- ), Sybil Kein (1939- ), and Brown-Guillory (1954- ). In other words, she blends some little-known artists’ buried or previous- ly unpublished works with plays written by recognized playwrights in an effort to help others “see the contribu- tions that black women dramatists have made not only to African American theater but to American theater” (p. xiii). Her book, however, transcends that goal in some important and useful ways.

First, the authors contribute to and establish connec- tions with a literary tradition that moves outside, as well as inside, the theatre. Brown-Guillory makes the inside contributions and connections clear. For example, writ- ing about Georgia Douglas Johnson, Brown-Guillory explains how Johnson, whose works focused upon wom- en and the “empowerment or disempowerment” of blacks, “was instrumental in developing the tradition out of which such notable black women dramatists as Alice Childress, Lorraine Hansberry, and Ntozake Shange have come” (p. 12). Or she illustrates how Ange- lina Weld Grimke, as teacher and playwright (her play Rachel was the first play by a black woman to be profes- sionally produced), influenced other writers like John- son or May Miller.

One dimension that Brown-Guillory does not dis- cuss, but does make accessible by offering these plays for examination, especially the early ones, is the aware- ness of connections outside the theatre. Character types and dominant themes appearing in these plays consis- tently reappear in contemporary literature-poetry and fiction, as weli as drama, by black women writers. For example, two plays, Safe (Johnson, 1926) and It’s Mornin’ (Graham, 1940), have as protagonists women who kill their own children because they love them and want to protect them from racism and white violence. Liza Pettigrew (Safe) kills her newborn son so that he

will not grow up and be lynched by a white mob, while Cissie (It’s Mornin’) kills her 14-year-old daughter to protect her from being sold into slavery to and sexual abuse by a white plantation owner. These characters seem in some ways-especially in courage and motive - forerunners of women who appear in later literature written by black females.

Another example concerns themes embodied in these plays that recur in works by African American women: women making sacrifices, the disfunction of the Ameri- can societal structure; blacks not “turning over to white liberals” the task of nurturing the young but assuming “responsibility” themselves; intraracial bias between marginalized blacks and blacks who have “made it” in- side the system (Kein, Get Together), between ‘light’- and ‘dark’-skinned people of color (Guillory, Mum Phyllis), or between men who argue “the debilitating effects of the ‘Matriarchal Society’ on black men” and black wom- en who are brave enough to counteract their biased views (Wine in the Wilderness).

Brown-Guillory offers biographical notes, as well as a synopsis and analysis for each play; and although analyses of the plays are often overexplicated (some- times they are almost as long as the text of the play), they do spell out dominant themes and develop patterns of connection among authors who “present a slice of the United States history from the unique perspective of women who have been both midwives and pallbearers of African American dreamers” (p. xv). In addition, the 20-page bibliography of published plays, produced plays, anthologies, and critical sources for further read- ing offer a wealth of possibility for the curious who wish to pursue scholarly study or for the readers who wish to enlarge their knowledge about African American wom- en writers.

ELAINE R. OGNIBENE

SIENA COLLEGE LDUDONVILLE, NEW YORK, USA

PEACEWORK: ORAL HISIDRIES OF WOMEN PEACE ACTIV-

ISTS, edited by Judith Porter Adams. 228 pages. Twayne Publishers, Boston, 1991. US $24.95.

This book is a skillfully edited, fascinating exercise in collective contemporary biography. Out of interviews with 90 elderly members of the US Section of the Wom- en’s International League for Peace and Freedom and Women Strike for Peace, Judith Porter Adams has se- lected 23 women to give their testimonies. The result is not a comprehensive historical survey, but rather a re- cord of unacknowledged grassroots heroism-for noth- ing less than heroism is asked of anti-militarists in 20th- century America. The women come from diverse backgrounds-they include an ex-nun, a wealthy “good Jewish mother,” a survivor of Auschwitz, a German- born citizen of Nuremberg during the trials, two in- terned Japanese Americans, a daughter of a Ku Klux Klan father, a black lay-preacher, a Gray Panther, a Nor- wegian-born professor, several Quakers, and an Italian working-class Catholic AIDS counsellor. What they have in common is their evolving life-long commitment to civil liberty, social justice, and anti-militarism. They have also shared, in varying degrees, experiences of so- cial ostracism and persecution. One woman was beaten

Book Reviews 323

by the Gestapo, another was strip-searched, at the age of 72, by US police, others were attacked by the police with tear gas and mace. One was subpoenaed by the Un- American Activities Committee, another was fired time and again from her teaching jobs for refusing to give the loyalty oath; several went to prison. But it is part of their stature that these women do not see themselves as hero- ines or as great achievers, but as seekers and strugglers. They resist the temptation to congratulate themselves, confessing instead to the recognition that on issue after issue they have failed. Nevertheless, they stubbornly re- sist the alternative temptation- to be paralyzed by de- spair. Time and again they still come up with new ideas, new projects.

Conscious of the pernicious efficacy of a lying, bru- talizing, brainwashing TV culture, Isabel Cerney pro- poses a women’s satellite TV station to commission and broadcast women’s issue programmes from all around the world. Madeline Duckles proposes a Shadow Wom- en’s Government with an alternative President, foreign policy, budget, and medical, and educational plan. And Mary Duffield has already started her electronic nervous system of the future-teaching children in America and Nicaragua to communicate via ham radio stations.

Some of these women are dead, but their words out- live them: “It is important to choose activities that you can see [have] some effect.” “One of the things that makes the [official] political system work best is direct action.” “Every human being in this country knows how dangerous an atomic bomb is and they didn’t learn it from the President.”

My only regret on finishing this valuable contribu- tion to 20th-century oral history is that the editor did not include a postscript in her Conclusion, alerting read- ers to the latest generation of women peace activists-in Central America and the Sanctuary Movement and, to name just one, Katya Komisaruk, who destroyed a NAV- STAR nuclear missile computer in 1987 but was not allowed to state her case based on conscience and inter- national law. As Margaret Stein says in Peacework: “There’s always going to be another thing to do.”

SYBIL OLDFIELD UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX

BRIGHTON, UK

WOMEN WAR CORRESPONDENTS OF WORLD WAR II, by Lilya Wagner, 174 pages. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 1989. Hardcover, US $37.95.

rhere’s a certain fascination many of us experience: We are drawn to learn about ‘exceptional’ women of past eras. One such category is the women who excelled in careers that were not only atypical for all women, but were also atypical for most men. Perhaps no other pro- fessional career suits this classification more than that of the woman war correspondent. In an era when wom- en journalists were, if not uncommon, at least a minori- ty, one wonders about the motivation that led women journalists during World War II to abandon traditional expectations. They overcame barriers against women competing in a “man’s world” and forged ahead to take part in the extraordinarily male world of that era: the

wartime front line. Once there, they did the work of reporting the war with courage and skill.

Our interest in their uniqueness and other significant questions are enough to compel us to look with anticipa- tion to such books as Lilya Wagner’s survey of women war correspondents. Unfortunately, while the book- jacket blurb promises an in-depth analysis, the text is superficial, thus disappointing to the reader. This slim book provides brief biographies of three to six pages each of 19 women journalists who covered World War II, along with brief excerpts of stories they wrote for their newspapers.

What the book does best is simply introduce women who are not well-known today, and who probably de- serve to be remembered for their unusual careers. For the in-depth insights a more analytical approach to their lives could bring to our reclamation of women’s history, further research is necessary. Of the several famous women Wagner includes, in particular Hemingway’s two wives, Martha Gellhorn and Mary Welsh, much better accounts of their exploits are readily available.

The reader should be advised that the author uses a chummy, vintage tone throughout, as conveyed by the tendency to dwell on the physical attributes of the wom- en, i.e., “beautiful head of red hair and marvelous legs,” and “with dark hair tumbling past her shoulders, a full mouth, and pale blue, heavily lidded eyes . . ”

This book will be most useful as a reference source for scholars and students who are interested enough in women journalists or women of the World War II era to overlook the book’s flaws.

MARILYN HODER-SALMON FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

MIAMI, FL, USA

THE REFLOWERING OF THE GODDESS, by Gloria Feman Orenstein, 211 pages, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1990. Hardcover, US $47.50, Paper, US $17.95.

The work of women researchers into prehistory over the past 20 years, such as that of Merlin Stone, Helen Diner, Maria Gimbutas, and others, has thrown into high relief the notion of two different mythic systems that have governed the development of humanity over the past 30,000 or more years.

The first of these, the Goddess or Creator as Female mythos, was essentially a natural spirituality that recog- nized the earth as sacred. This was supplanted about 5,000 years ago by the patriarchal mythos of the Creator as Male, which essentially disassociated nature from spirit, or earth from God. It was accompanied by a war- based technology, a social reconstruction of gender, and use of the written word.

In the past decade or so, in the face of mounting global disasters, a new zeitgeist has emerged in the West- ern world. It can be seen in the growth of the humanitar- ian New Age movement, the environmental green move- ment, the Gaia philosophy in science, and Goddess consciousness in feminism. Roughly speaking, it is symptomised by a search for a new way of perceiving and interacting with the world. The recent accolades heaped by Hollywood upon the film “Dances With