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arguchikdoris lessing won the nobel prize for literature. she is only the 11th woman to win the literature nobel since they started handing out the prize in 1901, and only the 34th woman to win a nobel of any sort.
i still remember reading "a sunrise on the veld" in my 1st year comp class at GRJC. i was entranced. it was the first time i had read something that seemed to capture and express the implacable amorality of nature--something that i, an instinctive atheist in a city whose culture was dominated by fundamentalist calvinist christians, had always felt but never dared to express too loudly (except among like-minded friends, or, oddly, in classroom discussions...or on the paper message board in GRJC's student center, where i could remain anonymous; and also in my papers for school). lessing's essay made a huge impression on me, at a time when i was just starting to realize how much bigger, messier, and more diverse and interesting the world "out there" was, than my provincial hometown of grand rapids, MI.
it's funny, i haven't read much more of lessing's work. i would be very interested to read it with a postcolonial theoretical lens. i would expect her work to be somewhat problematic, or at least complicated by her position as a white, imperial british subject (read: member of the colonizing class) who was born in what is now iran and reared in what is now zimbabwe.
i understand her later, SF work is pretty bad, or at least has been critically lambasted. i should check it out. my curiosity is piqued.
i still remember reading "a sunrise on the veld" in my 1st year comp class at GRJC. i was entranced. it was the first time i had read something that seemed to capture and express the implacable amorality of nature--something that i, an instinctive atheist in a city whose culture was dominated by fundamentalist calvinist christians, had always felt but never dared to express too loudly (except among like-minded friends, or, oddly, in classroom discussions...or on the paper message board in GRJC's student center, where i could remain anonymous; and also in my papers for school). lessing's essay made a huge impression on me, at a time when i was just starting to realize how much bigger, messier, and more diverse and interesting the world "out there" was, than my provincial hometown of grand rapids, MI.
it's funny, i haven't read much more of lessing's work. i would be very interested to read it with a postcolonial theoretical lens. i would expect her work to be somewhat problematic, or at least complicated by her position as a white, imperial british subject (read: member of the colonizing class) who was born in what is now iran and reared in what is now zimbabwe.
i understand her later, SF work is pretty bad, or at least has been critically lambasted. i should check it out. my curiosity is piqued.
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