Elizabeth Ammons

Elizabeth Ammons grew up as the youngest member in a family of eight children in a household governed by survival of the strongest. Against the greatest of odds, she managed to survive a childhood filled with memories of incest, rape and torture. Yet her survival carried a price and that price was the shattering of her soul. By the time Elizabeth was born, her family had become a distorted and wicked caricature of the perfect American families depicted on television in the early 50 ́s. Neglected and abused from birth, she was forced at a very early age to protect herself from the evil that surrounded her. At the age of three the first of thirty-two alter personalities was formed. Stone Child was a catatonic, unfeeling toddler who could endure almost anything, even the violent, savage rape by her father, while being held down by her older sister. Elizabeth ́s ability to insulate herself from an unbearable existence served her well as a child, it enabled her survival, but it created havoc in her life as an adult. She began to experience longer and longer periods of lost time, sometimes hours, sometimes days, sometimes months, when she was unaware of her surroundings or her actions. Life became even more chaotic for Elizabeth following a thwarted suicide attempt on her fortieth birthday. It was while hospitalized she was diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder and began therapy. After being told by a psychiatrist and several therapists she was not the birth person, but simply another personality, Elizabeth set out to prove otherwise by forcing the alters to give up their secrets. Essentially Elizabeth had created an alter to cope with each aspect of her life. Among the thirty-two, there were the children, Molly and Rachel, who scribbled on walls and loved lollipops; Carl, the mechanic, who also handled bathroom duties; Jennifer, the cold, efficient businesswoman; Sarah, the religious fanatic; Ginny, the 18-year-old who loved to have sex for teddy bears; and Cuemaster, who delegated the duties and maintained control. The memories of the traumatic events, which caused these alters and others to be created, had been left with them, not Elizabeth. Through eight months of intensive therapy, Elizabeth reclaimed those memories, uncovering secrets kept hidden for years in the dark recesses of her mind. Shortly after being diagnosed with MPD in 1990, Elizabeth formed a support group for survivors of incest and child abuse. The name, Daisys In Recovery, was taken from her childhood spelling for daisies. Daisys gained non-profit status in 1992 and implemented an outreach jail program called Victims No More in 1995. Although Elizabeth ́s story is a grim chronicle of a child ́s shattered soul, it is more importantly, the successful triumph of the human spirit. It is a portrait of a woman who embodies the true meaning of forgiveness. Her story has become an inspiration to many who have endured abuse and is one of hope and encouragement for all in the face of despair.

A Survivor's Story

Daisys Will Grow Anywhere

General for the Series: The Casebooks in Criticism introduce readers to the essential criticism on landmark works of literature and film. For each volume, a distinguished scholar who is an authority on the text has collected the most elucidating and distinctive scholarly essays on that work and added key supporting materials. Each volume includes a substantial introduction which considers the key features of the work, describes its publication history, and contextualizes its cultural import and contemporary reputation while also surveying the major approaches which have informed the works critical history. A condensed bibliography offers suggestions for further reading. The compact volumes provide a critical survey and suggest provocative ways to engage with their texts. They are ideally suited to those interested in developing a deeper understanding of a works history and significance. Specific for this book: Most of the best criticism on Stowe's landmark novel is fairly recent. Until the combined impact of the civil rights and women's movements changed the focus of the academic ciriculum, Uncle Tom's Cabin seldom appeared in classrooms or as the subject of published scholarship. However, from the mid-1970 forward, the book has been widely written about and taught. Today, Uncle Toms Cabin is a stable, important part of the nineteenth-centruy American literature canon and has generated a rich body of new critical work. This casebook collects the best of the new scholarship as well as the most influential older essays. Included in this volume are letters by Harriet Beecher Stowe and articles by James Baldwin, Leslie Fiedler, Jane Tompkins, Gillian Brown, Robert Stepto, and Elizabeth Ammons.

A Casebook

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin

The activist tradition in American literature has long testified to the power of words to change people and the power of people to change the world, yet in recent years many professional humanists have chosen to distract themselves with a postmodern fundamentalism of indeterminacy and instability rather than engage with social and political issues. Throughout her bold and provocative call to action, Elizabeth Ammons argues that the responsibility now facing humanists is urgent: inside and outside academic settings, they need to revive the liberal arts as a progressive cultural force that offers workable ideas and inspiration in the real-world struggle to achieve social and environmental justice. Brave New Words challenges present and future literary scholars and teachers to look beyond mere literary critique toward the concrete issue of social change and how to achieve it. Calling for a profound realignment of thought and spirit in the service of positive social change, Ammons argues for the continued importance of multiculturalism in the twenty-first century despite attacks on the concept from both right and left. Concentrating on activist U.S. writers—from ecocritics to feminists to those dedicated to exposing race and class biases, from Jim Wallis and Cornel West to Winona LaDuke and Paula Moya and many others—she calls for all humanists to link their work to the progressive literature of the last half century, to insist on activism in the service of positive change as part of their mission, and to teach the power of hope and action to their students. As Ammons clearly demonstrates, much of American literature was written to expose injustice and motivate readers to work for social transformation. She challenges today’s academic humanists to address the issues of hope and purpose by creating a practical activist pedagogy that gives students the knowledge to connect their theoretical learning to the outside world. By relying on the transformative power of literature and replacing nihilism and powerlessness with conviction and faith, the liberal arts can offer practical, useful inspiration to everyone seeking to create a better world.

How Literature Will Save the Planet

Brave New Words

The early 1890s through the late 1920s saw an explosion in serious long fiction by women in the United States. Considering a wide range of authors--African American, Asian American, white American, and Native American--this book looks at the work of seventeen writers from that period: Frances Ellen Harper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sarah Orne Jewett, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Kate Chopin, Pauline Hopkins, Gertrude Stein, Mary Austin, Sui Sin Far, Willa Cather, Humishuma, Jessie Fauset, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Anzia Yezierska, Edith Summers Kelley, and Nella Larsen. The discussion focuses on the differences in their work and the similarities that unite them, particularly their determination to experiment with narrative form as they explored and voiced issues of power for women. Analyzing the historical context that both enabled and limited American women writers at the turn of the century, Ammons provides detailed readings of many texts and offers extensive commentary on the interaction between race and gender. This book joins the deepening discussion of modern women writers' creation of themselves as artists and raises fundamental questions about the shape of American literary history as it has been constructed in the academy.

Elizabeth Ammons

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