From modern literature to menopause, from utopian thought to rodeos—in this classic collection of essays, Ursula K. Le Guin roves with her customary audacity over the intersecting arenas of literature, feminism, and social responsibility, exploding any received notions she comes across and revealing visionary possibilities in their stead.
Le Guin is an authentic, wise woman, remembering, performing, and passing on the ancient ceremony of celebration, dancing “the dance of renewal, the dance that made the world”—and in this collection, she does so with wit and eloquence that make for exhilarating listening.
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“Chronologically arranged, these 33 talks and essays and 17 reviews of books and films, dating from 1976 through 1987, record Le Guin’s responses to ethical and political climates, the transforming effect of certain literary ideas and the changes of a supple, disciplined mind…The noted science fiction writer eloquently discusses feminism, social responsibility, literature, and travel. We read her deeply considered views on abortion, menopause, motherhood, family planning; censorship, criticism, myth in contemporary life, women writers, the reciprocity of prose and poetry, the language of power; the advantages and pleasures of travel by Amtrak; heroism in Scott and Amundsen; the ideas of Doris Lessing and Italo Calvino; and how science fiction addresses the issue of nuclear war.”
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Publishers Weekly