Women Writing Intimacy and Resistance

“This is a timely and wide-ranging collection, addressing the complexities of intimacy in terms of public and private, masquerade and honesty, violence and selfhood, bodies and minds. The essays consider an international cast of writers, with indigenous and postcolonial perspectives foregrounded; it is inter-class and inter-privilege. The book constitutes a much needed enquiry into what intimacy means for individuals, communities and societies; it refigures feminist resistance as praxis and method.”

—Rebecca Bowler, Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century English Literature, Keele University

 This collection explores how women writers in the English-speaking world transform personal intimacy into political engagement, challenging cultural oppression across genres—life writing, novels, poetry, and theatre—from the 19th century to today. Guided by the feminist slogan “the personal is political,” it bridges feminist, decolonial, ethnic, and queer studies, revealing how gender-based domination intersects with other forms of oppression. The authors highlight how these writers, across various forms of expression, imagine new modes of resistance and carve out space for social change.

Nicoleta Alexoae-Zagni is Associate Professor at Paris 8 University—Vincennes-Saint-Denis, France.

Valérie Baisnee-Keay is Associate Professor at Université Paris Saclay, France.

Corinne Bigot is Associate Professor at Université Toulouse 2 Jean Jaurès, France.

Stephanie Genty was Associate Professor at the Université Paris Saclay, France, and now retired.

Nathalie Saudo-Welby is Professor at the University of Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France.

The co-editors are part of an inter-university research group called FAAAM and have worked on two previous volumes: Text and Image in Women’s Life Writing (2021) and Women’s Life Writing and the Practice of Reading (2018).