SOURCE: Kolmar, Wendy K. “‘Dialectics of Connectedness’: Supernatural Elements in Novels by Bambara, Cisneros, Grahn, and Erdrich.” In Haunting the House of Fiction: Feminist Perspectives on Ghost Stories by American Women, edited by Lynette Carpenter and Wendy K. Kolmar, pp. 236-49. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991.

In the following essay, Kolmar examines novels by four authors who utilize supernatural elements in their writing. The works discussed are: The House on Mango Street, by Cisneros, The Salt Eaters, by Toni Cade Bambara, Tracks, by Louise Erdrich, and Mundane's World, by Judy Grahn.

During the seven years I have worked with women's ghost stories, I have been troubled by what seems to be an epistemological problem—at least for those of us who want to talk about women's writing—inherent in the way we define the genre of supernatural literature or perhaps inherent in the worldview propounded by the literature...