Bridg­ing lit­er­ary stud­ies and cul­tur­al his­to­ry, this edit­ed vol­ume exam­ines Jew­ish women writ­ers’ wide-rang­ing con­tri­bu­tions to Amer­i­can lit­er­ary cul­ture from the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry to the present. Matri­lin­eal Dis­sent fea­tures inno­v­a­tive con­sid­er­a­tions of con­tem­po­rary aut­ofic­tion, graph­ic nar­ra­tives, and nov­els by Mizrahi writ­ers as well as mid­dle­brow, Pro­gres­sive Era, and sec­ond-wave fem­i­nist lit­er­a­ture. Authors dis­cussed herein―such as Roz Chast, Eri­ca Jong, Annie Nathan Mey­er, and Adri­enne Rich―challenge mono­lith­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Jew­ish­ness and gen­der while imag­in­ing rad­i­cal alter­na­tives.

By trac­ing a matri­lin­eal lit­er­ary his­to­ry, this book dis­sents from read­ers and crit­ics who con­tin­ue to describe wom­en’s con­tri­bu­tions as mere com­men­taries on and cor­rec­tives to male-dom­i­nat­ed canons. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, this vol­ume trou­bles the pol­i­tics of inher­i­tance, con­ti­nu­ity, and lin­eage to under­score the ways that lit­er­ary traditions―like Jew­ish­ness and gender―are mutu­al­ly con­sti­tu­tive and con­tin­u­al­ly in flux.

Col­lec­tive­ly, con­trib­u­tors reframe Jew­ish Amer­i­can lit­er­ary his­to­ry through fem­i­nist approach­es that have rev­o­lu­tion­ized the field, from inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty and the #MeToo move­ment to queer the­o­ry and dis­abil­i­ty stud­ies. Exam­in­ing both canon­i­cal and less­er-known texts, this col­lec­tion asks: what hap­pens to con­ven­tion­al under­stand­ings of Jew­ish Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture when we cen­ter wom­en’s writ­ing and acknowl­edge women as dom­i­nant play­ers in Jew­ish cul­tur­al production?