cover image Listen to Their Voices: Twenty Interviews with Women Who Write

Listen to Their Voices: Twenty Interviews with Women Who Write

Mickey Pearlman. W. W. Norton & Company, $20.95 (231pp) ISBN 978-0-393-03442-4

Pearlman adds to her earlier Inter/View, a collection of interviews with women writers (coauthored with Katherine Usher Henderson, and entitled A Voice of One's Own in paperback), by reaching out here to writers of diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Many are ``so-called hyphenated writers''--e.g., the exuberant, authoritative African American poet Lucille Clifton ( Quilting Poems ) and the young Chinese American novelist Gish Jen ( Typical American )--whose works encompass issues of culture as well as gender. In essay form, Pearlman describes their responses to being so labeled: ``It's, like, not my problem,'' says Philippine-born novelist Jessica Hagedorn ( Dogeaters ) about being read as a Filipino writer. Other interviews capture the fairly reserved responses of poet Sharon Olds ( The Father ), the publishing know-how of bestselling novelist Anne Rice ( The Tale of the Body Thief ) and the graceful reflections of mystery writer Susan Kenney ( Sailing ). On the whole, however, this volume is somewhat more mannered and less incisively revealing than its predecessor. (Jan.)