Changing Minds: Women and the Political Essay, 1960–2001

Jurečič (Illness as Narrative), an English professor at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, studies in this incisive inquiry how writers Rachel Carson, Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, and Patricia J. Williams “experimented with the expansive possibilities of the essay form.” Tracing the formal development of each writer’s work, Jurečič charts, for example, how Carson’s “lyrical” early essays on marine life evolved away from the anthropomorphizing studies popular in 1940s and ’50s nature writing to offer a more objective and naturalistic overview of ocean ecosystems, mixing “facts with fables, science with stories, and technical explanations with personal observations” to provide a distinctive literary take on the genre. Jurečič studies how the authors’ gender affected the reception of their work, observing that Didion’s mash-up of personal narrative and reporting in “The White Album” garnered criticism for its allegedly excessive focus on her feelings. Examining how the writers’ pieces challenged dominant cultural discourse, Jurečič points out how Williams, a lawyer turned essayist best known for her 1991 collection The Alchemy of Race and Rights, blends narrative, memoir, and legal analysis to highlight “the degree to which racism is utterly enmeshed in U.S. society.” Jurečič’s prose is lucid and direct, and her analyses breathe new life into her subjects’ works. It’s a stimulating take on five estimable essayists. (Dec.)