On Lies, Secrets, and Silence

by Adrienne Rich

Book Overview

At issue are the politics of language; the uses of scholarship; and the topics of racism, history, and motherhood among others called forth by Rich as "part of the effort to define a female consciousness which is political, aesthetic, and erotic, and which refuses to be included or contained in the culture of passivity."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393009424
• ISBN13: 9780393009422
• Release Date: January 1979
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 310 Pages
• Weight: 0.59 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 4.9" x 7.2"

Customer Reviews

feminism of its time

Rich's work remains thoughtful and provoking even now. The changing feminist consciousness revealed by her collected essays is a fascinating portrait of a growth over time. This book deserves far more than one star.

On Lies Secrets and Silence

In this book, one of America's foremost poets and feminist theorists collects her most important prose writings, On Lies Secrets and Silence is an extraordinary sort of travel diary, documenting Rich's lifetime journeys to the frontier and into the interior. It traces the development of one individual consciouusness, "playing over such issues as motherhood, racism, history, poetry, the uses of scholarship, the politics of language." It "affirms the potentiality of a lesbian/feminism which extends the meaning of women's love for women to a political vision that touches every nerve ending of society." Since, by its nature, Rich's journey has not been linear, she has written a headnote for each essay, briefly discussing the circumstances of its writing. "I find in myself both severe and tender thoughts toward the women I have been, whose thoughts I find here." --- from book's back cover