Navigating Women’s Friendships in American Literature and Culture

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. Introduction: Navigating Women’s Friendships into the Twenty-First Century

   • Kristi Branham, Kelly L. Reames

   Pages 1-12

3. Friendship as Identity

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 13-13

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   2. Entangled Roots: “Old Friends” Reconnected in Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation

      • Marie Drews

      Pages 15-40

   3. The Gothic’s Creation of Women’s Friendship in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House

      • Megan M. Peabody, Mikkaila Poulin

      Pages 41-62

   4. Political Progress and Social Stall: Groupthink, Smart Talk, and Mary McCarthy ’s Friendship Novel

      • Cassandra Fetters

      Pages 63-83

   5. Girlfriend Epistemology in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple

      • Tangela Serls

      Pages 85-102

4. Friendship as Support

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 103-103

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   2. “We Will Work Together”: Interclass Women’s Collabships in Progressive Era Novels

      • Alicia Matheny Beeson

      Pages 105-128

   3. Fleur’s Kinship, Pauline’s Whiteness: How Colonization Shapes Friendship in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks

      • Rachel B. Griffis

      Pages 129-148

   4. “What Obligation Do I Have Toward Her?”: College Girl Friendships and Self-Actualization in Hangsaman and The Bell Jar

      • Julie Ooms

      Pages 149-173

   5. “The Tenderness of One Woman for Another”: Female Friendship and Revolt in the Twentieth-Century Works of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

      • Susan M. Stone

      Pages 175-199

5. Friendship as Challenge

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 201-201

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   2. “Feeling You Near”: Georgia O’Keeffe ’s Friendship with Mary Callery

      • Linda M. Grasso

      Pages 203-237

   3. “These Sweet Trees”: Alice Walker , June Jordan , and Womanist Friendship

      • Cheryl R. Hopson

      Pages 239-251

   4. Chicana Visions: Ana Castillo and Cherríe Moraga ’s Friendship , Falling Out, and Forgiveness

      • Leigh Johnson

      Pages 253-268

   5. Beat-Associated Women and Female Relationships in Carolyn Cassady’s Off the Road

      • Josette Lorig

      Pages 269-291

   6. “I Prefer to Think That History Made Her:” Exploring the Relationship Between Alice Dunbar-Nelson and Edwina Kruse Through This Lofty Oak

      • Monet Lewis-Timmons

      Pages 293-319

6. Back Matter

   Pages 321-327

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This volume presents a collection of critical essays that center women’s friendship in women’s literary and artistic production. Analyzing cultural portrayals of women’s friendships in fiction, letters, and film, these essays collectively suggest new models of literary interpretation that do not prioritize heterosexual romance. Instead, this book represents friendships as mature and meaningful relationships that contribute to identity formation and political coalition. Both the supportive and competitive aspects of friendships are shown to be crucial to women’s identities as individuals, political citizens, and artists. Addressing the complexities of how 20th- and 21st-century cultural texts construe women’s friendships as they navigate patriarchal institutions, this collection advances scholarship on friendship beyond men and masculine models.

• Interpersonal relationships
• Intimacy
• Literary production
• Patriarchal oppression
• Fiction
• Letters
• Film
• Identity formation
• Feminism
• 20th century
• 21st century

“This is an enormously rewarding anthology in which the reader can find witty, humorous, and tragic stories and gain insights into the plurality and diversity of women’s relationships.” (Xiuchun Zhang, Women's Studies, September 11, 2023)

• Gender and Women’s Studies, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, USA

  Kristi Branham

• Department of English, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, USA

  Kelly L. Reames

​Kristi Branham is Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at Western Kentucky University, USA. She has published articles in the Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice, Journal of American Studies, Literature and Film Quarterly, and contributed to the edited collection Home Sweat Home: Perspectives on House Work and Modern Relationships.

Kelly L. Reames is Associate Professor of English at Western Kentucky University, USA. She is the author of Women and Race in Contemporary U.S. Writing: From Faulkner to Morrison and Toni Morrison's Paradise: A Reader's Guide. 

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