The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions

Here acclaimed poet Alicia Ostriker both rereads the Bible from the ``controversial perspective of a twentieth-century Jewish woman'' and creatively interacts with it form a fiercely autobiographical point of view. What results is not another academic explication of the Bible's symbolic and psychological meanings but an imaginative and spiritual dialogue with characters and narratives of the Old Testament. Throughout, Ostriker's goal is to explore her own emotional universe via this ``conversation'' while at the same time using her impressive literary skills to tell the story of the Bible's often nameless women (e.g., Job's wife who, according to the story, had her children slain as a test of her husband's devotion to God and then had them replaced by ten new children.) Indeed, exploring the Bible's female characters' responses to the challenges that confront them becomes, in Ostriker's hands, a way of further humanizing the Bible for both men and women. (Nov.)