MEISENHELDER, Susan Edwards 1951-

PERSONAL: Born 1951. Education: University of Florida, B.A. (English), 1973, M.A. (English), 1975; University of California, Ph.D. (English), 1982.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—California State University, 5500 University Pkwy., University Hall 30136, San Bernardino, CA 92407; California Faculty Association, 400 Capitol Mall, Suite 400, Sacramento, CA 95814. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: California State University, San Bernardino, 1980—, currently professor of English; has also taught at the University of Botswana, University of Zimbabwe, and University of Mauritius. Former director of Inland Area Writing Project.

MEMBER: Service Employees International Union, American Association of University Professors (governing board representative), National Education Association, California Faculty Association (president, 1999-2003).

AWARDS, HONORS: Three Fulbright fellowships, including 1992.

WRITINGS:

Wordsworth's Informed Reader: Structures of Experience in His Poetry, Vanderbilt University Press (Nashville, TN), 1988.

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Race and Gender in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston, University of Alabama Press (Tuscaloosa, AL), 1999.

SIDELIGHTS: In Susan Edwards Meisenhelder's writings, the California State University English professor has attempted to reveal how her subjects' written works should be interpreted. For example, in her first publication, Wordsworth's Informed Reader: Structures of Experience in His Poetry, she explains how the poet's verses need to be interpreted within the context in which they were written in order to fully understand Wordsworth's intentions in writing them. Although W. W. Heath, writing in Choice, found the author's comments between extensively quoted poetry to be an "unnecessary re-creation" of the experience of simply reading the original verses, the reviewer appreciated Meisenhelder's "consistently sensible, and informative" text.

More extensively reviewed was Meisenhelder's second scholarly book, Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Race and Gender in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston. The scholar's thesis here is that, contrary to many literary critics' interpretations, the late African-American author did not become more conservative and less concerned with controversial issues of feminism as her writing career progressed. Rather, Meisenhelder maintains, Hurston became more covert with her messages so as not to put off her publishers and audiences, yet the principles Hurston held dear are still to be found in her fiction. As Keith D. Leonard observed in Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, "Hurston was therefore a feminist trickster who, unbeknownst to her hostile audience, added radical themes of female resistance to her more explicit racial affirmation."

Meisenhelder supports her point by exploring some of Hurston's less well-known stories. Also, as Rhonda Frederick related in an American Literature article, in one chapter the scholar "documents differences between archival materials and the final version of Dust Tracks on a Road" that demonstrate how Hurston changed her text to placate publishers. Critics, however, were not always thoroughly convinced by Meisenhelder's arguments. As Leonard asserted, "Meisenhelder posits the tension between feminism and racial affirmation as if it were a literary strategy, but Hurston does not consciously play one against the other as much as she uses this tension to suggest the ways male narratives of self-affirmation can operate in opposition to those of women." Frederick also maintained that the author places too much emphasis on her central point that literary critics have misinterpreted Hurston because of the author's thematic subterfuge, and that this is to the detriment of a fuller explanation as to why Hurston employed this strategy in the first place. "Meisenhelder," concluded Frederick, "devotes few pages to an examination of the effects of the trickster strategy." Despite this, Frederick felt that, especially in the case of Meisenhelder's archival research, the author has made a persuasive "argument for more complex readings of Hurston's canon." And Leonard attested that the author "provides a valuable and unique vision of Hurston as a master of her craft and audience."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Literature, March, 2001, Rhonda Frederick, review of Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Race and Gender in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston, p. 209.

Choice, September, 1989, W. W. Heath, review of Wordsworth's Informed Reader: Structures of Experience in His Poetry, p. 128; January, 2000, J. W. Hall, review of Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick, p. 934.

Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, January, 2001, Keith D. Leonard, review of Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick, p. 118.

Southern Quarterly, winter, 2002, Genevieve West, review of Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick, pp. 172-174.*