Kate Zambreno: Heroines

A manifesto reclaiming the wives and mistresses of literary modernism that inspired a generation of writers and scholars, reissued with a new introduction after more than a decade. Kate Zambreno’s genre defining manifesto reclaiming the wives and mistresses of literary modernism that inspired a generation of writers and scholars, reissued after more than a decade with a new introduction by Jamie Hood.

In Heroines, Zambreno extends the polemic into a dazzling, original work of literary scholarship. Combing theories that have dictated what literature should be and who is allowed to write it, she traces the genesis of a cultural template that consistently exiles feminine experience to the realm of the ‘minor,’ and diagnoses women for transgressing social bounds. ‘ANXIETY: When she experiences it, it’s pathological,’ writes Zambreno. ‘When he does, it’s existential.’