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Crazy Woman CreekCrazy Woman Creek: Women Rewrite the American West Edited by Linda M. Hasselstrom, Gaydell Collier & Nancy Curtis A collection of prose and poetry about real women in the West and their connections to a larger whole. 153 women west of the Mississippi write of the ways women shape and sustain their communities. Whether these groups are organized, imposed, or spontaneous, this collection shows that where women gather, anything is possible. Crazy Woman Creek celebrates community connections built or strengthened by women that unveil a new West. Anthology, nonfiction and poetry. With contributor biographies, map and introduction. 300 pages; Size: 6 X 9. paperback ISBN 0-618-24933-8 $14.00 Published 2004 Houghton Mifflin, Mariner Books Want to know more? More about Crazy Woman Creek Praise for Crazy Woman Creek Reviews of Crazy Woman Creek Please note: a readers’ guide to Crazy Woman Creek is available on the "Articles" page. Crazy Woman Creek: Women Rewrite the American West In Crazy Woman Creek you'll meet an Alaskan town that hosts Vietnamese refugees; a "posse of lesbians" that helps a newcomer; San Francisco commuters who ignore their squabbles to rally around a larger issue; a village in Washington that conspires to keep a developmentally disabled woman safe; Canadian women who provide food baskets; a hippie mother in California who creatively supports her local library; an Afghani and a Mormon who help a new mother of twins; a rancher who reports on the reactions of cowboys when she chooses horse work over housework; and many more. back to top Crazy Woman Creek Reviews Click on the highlighted publication or scroll on down the page. The Bloomsbury Review The Denver Post Elliott Bay Booknotes High Country News San Francisco Chronicle Women's Independent Press Wyoming Library Roundup If you know of any other reviews, please send us a copy being sure to include the date and publication information, so that we may include it here. Thanks! back to top The Bloomsbury Review Jan/ review by Nancy Simonds How nice! A review of Crazy Woman Creek was advertised on the front cover of The Bloomsbury Review– above the fold, no less. And the review itself was great, appearing on page 21 with a nice big cover photo of the book. The reviewer, Nancy (or Nanette) Simonds, is a “cultural historian specializing in western women’s history” who lives in Denver. Sounds like a perfect person to really understand this book. In part the review says: “Just as in their two previous books, Linda M. Hasselstrom, Gaydell Collier, and Nancy Curtis have stirred up another potent brew of women riding herd on their western experiences. Their earlier anthologies, Leaning into the Wind and Woven on the Wind, chronicled the western experience of women and women's friendships, respectively. Their message continues to be that when two or three are gathered together, anything can happen, especially if you are talking about today's western women. “The new volume, Crazy Woman Creek, celebrates community. It's not your usual city council meeting. . .” [The review then quotes briefly from Sureva Towler’s poem “I’m Afraid I Can’t Attend the Next Meeting” and mentions various pieces, not by name but by a line or a catch-word here and there. The review continues:] “In collecting stories and poems from 21 states west of the Mississippi, Hasselstrom and company entwine their wins and losses around our psyches like the tendrils of morning glories planted from Granny's seeds. The immediacy of their experience is real and engaging.” [More pieces mentioned but not by name]. “Being western is like an infectious disease: If you are in the room long enough, you're sure to catch it.” [More examples, this time naming Karen Berry, Kay Porterfield and Page Lambert] “Hasselstrom's introduction, "Beyond Crazy Woman Creek," is a priceless journey into the heart of the project. She calls it a conversation in prose and poetry. The authors, half of whom are professional writers or poets, convey a sense of intimacy with the reader as though they were handing you a mug of strong, hot coffee on a cold February morning. “This book should be read. There are hardly any other volumes like it with the breadth of experience of present-day women as they struggle and triumph to find their place under the western sun. One of the book's main strengths is that it is so widely representative of different lives and geographic places. Its poems and stories come from 153 contributors and are alive with humor, tragedy, and hope.” [Then there's a paragraph about the three editors’ backgrounds, travels and work together. The review ends:] “So, "Cowgirl Up, Cupcakes." It's time to read.” The Bloomsbury Review is a book magazine published 6 times a year. It includes reviews, interviews with and profiles of authors, essays, original poetry and a variety of features. The Bloomsbury Review 1553 Platte Street, Suite 206 Denver CO 80202-1167 (303) 455-3123 www.bloomsburyreview.com back to top The Denver Post June 27, 2004, page 9L review by Sureva Towler Our very own contributor, Sureva Towler (WOVEN: “Up Fortification Creek” and CWC: “No One Baked Cookies” & “I’m Afraid I Can’t Attend the Next Meeting”), published a “Special to The Denver Post” introducing a large number of people to Crazy Woman Creek. Way to go Sureva! With an emphasis on those twenty contributors living in Colorado, Towler describes a cross-section of the book in such intriguing snatches the reader will want to sit down and read a copy of the book right then to meet these “rugged, resourceful and compassionate” women. “Beware the power of a handful of women drinking coffee around the kitchen table,” Towler writes. “...when the Good Old Girls gather to rag on the past, lament the present and map the future, something’s coming down. The fabric of your community is more than likely gonna change.” This review should be available in its entirety in the online archives of The Denver Post. www.DenverPost.com back to top Elliott Bay Booknotes Summer 2004, page 10 review by Sarah Riley In the summer issue of the Elliott Bay Book Company newsletter, reviewer Sarah Riley gave a nice little writeup of Crazy Woman Creek. Although there was no book cover photo printed with the review to catch the eye of a skimming reader (wistful sigh), it’s wonderful to be included in such a publication. The reviewer said, in part, “The voices in Crazy Woman Creek give credit to friendships, make sense of struggles, and find hope in plates of food. What editors Hasselstrom, Collier and Curtis have in common...is a feminine dynamic, determined to create a space where women’s voices are shaped only by their freedom to be whole and unique. Each of the authors finds a greater sense of community in the physical and ethereal places that are uniquely their own...” Elliott Bay Books 101 South Main Street Seattle, Washington 98104 1-800-962-5311 www.elliottbaybook.com back to top High Country News September 27, 2004 "Dang Crazy Women" Review by Jodi Peterson This nice little book review covered more than a quarter of the "bulletin board" page and included a large book-cover photo. Saying the book had "stories to share that range from heart-wrenching to hilarious," the reviewer selected contributor B.J. Buckley's poem Superior Laundry, Sheridan, Wyoming for an excerpt. The review concluded that "stories such as this one show us how to weave both old-timers and newcomers into the weft of community, how to foster neighborliness." High Country News is a bi-weekly news magazine that reports on the West's natural resources, public lands, and changing communities. www.hcn.org back to top The San Francisco Chronicle May 30, 2004 review by Patricia Conover Apparently bored by well-behaved women, the reviewer found some of the stories of "rural women banding together" to help each other "woefully familiar" and seemed to prefer those stories about "isolation, disenfranchisement and loneliness." Here are some excerpts from the review: "In Crazy Woman Creek: Women Rewrite the American West, editors Linda M. Hasselstrom, Gaydell Collier and Nancy Curtis chart the West's remaining wild places using a women-only compass, focusing on Western communities formed by and for women. Women's memory pieces seem to capture the spiritual nuances of the West in a way the male-dominated mythology of black hat/ "...Imaginative, courageous and wistful, Crazy Woman Creek gathers in one place a symphony of authentic, if uneven, women's voices. They illuminate the disappearing West, its bittersweet past and its uncertain future." For the full review go to www.sfgate.com and search the archives for the book review which ran May 30, 2004 back to top Women's Independent Press December 2004 reading review by Rose Field The following review is more a commentary on the specific reading event, rather than the book itself. And of course each reading will be unique, depending on the contributors attending, the setting, and the audience. Compare this commentary to the review appearing in the San Francisco Chronicle (above). Both reviewers seem to be bored by hearing about "ordinary" western women's lives, though those real lives are just what the three anthologies are documenting. Ah, well. The Community of Women by Rose Field On the southern shore of Flathead Lake, the largest fresh water lake west of the Mississippi River, sits the community of Polson, Montana. On September 8, 2004, about 15 women came together for what was described as a first in the town: a reading by women writers. The reading was held in Isabelle's, a gourmet bistro, owned by a woman who loves to make desserts. Four women who contributed to Crazy Woman Creek: Women Rewrite the American West shared their stories. One of those writers was Jennifer Graf Groneberg, who attended university in Urbana, Illinois. The anthology being promoted was the third of a series of books about women in the western United States, compiled with the intent of showing true women and their real lives, not the skinny cowgirl on a palomino that is the image often presented of the western female. The essays and poems read in Polson, representing just a few of the 153 contributors to the book, were predominantly about women new to the west and/ Collecting stories of women's lives, written by women, has been done before. Such books serve to document ordinary people and their daily existence and provide a balance to official histories that often focus primarily on rich, white men. Nevertheless, the stories can make an outsider feel voyeuristic, while an insider may feel as though the tales are nothing different from stories told among friends every day. As for women gathering to hear other women's stories, that seems common. It has happened over coffee while husbands and children are at work or school. It has happened in workplaces and schools as women gather in sex-specific restrooms. It has happened in numerous support groups in communities throughout the country. I kept waiting for something to happen at Isabelle's that went beyond sharing events in women's lives. Instead of being a group of ladies drinking coffee, I wanted the place to have overtones of the pubs in Revere, Massachusetts, where the seeds of the American Revolution were sown. The women reading were not in need of professional encouragement; they had won several awards for their writings, as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Instead, as with their roles of mothers and wives, they seemed to want to share their lives with their community. The women listening seemed to have attended to show their support of friends and other women, nothing more. Some of the readings were definitely about the west, such as B.J. Buckley's wry poem describing the night a young woman walked into a laundromat in Missoula with three-days worth of clothes dirtied by ranch hands during branding season. Other stories merely seemed a local version of conditions that exist elsewhere, such as Geraldine Connolly's story of re-locating from Washington, D.C. and slowly finding the center of a community near the northern shore of Flathead Lake masquerading as a bookstore. Somewhere in the middle was Groneberg's tale of women having a homemade speciality that always appeared on tables in times of crisis, such as funerals. It reminded me of stories that I read in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, about tables at weddings heavy with cookies. Groneberg's story also contained a universal truth, that is often neglected: she read of being a new wife, living in a rented apartment, learning from the older woman that was her landlady, receiving and giving gifts of food and home repairs, realizing that we all have a responsibility to each other. This commentary ran in the December 2004 Illinois edition of Women's Independent Press. Reprinted here by permission of the author. www.womensindependentpress.com back to top Wyoming Library Roundup "Twelve Books of Christmas" 2004 reviewed by Stella Terrazas A review of Crazy Woman Creek will be printed in the Wyoming Library Roundup's fall 2004 edition, the "12 Books of Christmas" feature. The reviewer is Stella Terrazas of the Teton County Library in Jackson, Wyoming. Watch this space for a review of the review. back to top |
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