Smith, Jeanne Rosier 1966-

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SMITH, Jeanne Rosier 1966-

PERSONAL: Born 1966. Education: Georgetown University, B.A. (English), 1988; Tufts University, M.A. (English and American literature), 1989, Ph.D., 1994. Hobbies and other interests: Portrait and landscape artist.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, University of California Press, 2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94704-1012.

CAREER: Educator and artist. Seton Hall University, instructor of American literature for ten years; currently professional landscape and portrait artist.

WRITINGS:

Writing Tricksters: Mythic Gambols in AmericanEthnic Fiction, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1997.

Contributor of articles to periodicals including Sail, MELUS, and Modern Language Studies.

SIDELIGHTS: Working as an university-level instructor of American literature before embarking on a career as a professional artist, Jeanne Rosier Smith focuses on the phenomenon of the trickster in her 1997 title Writing Tricksters: Mythic Gambols in American Ethnic Fiction. The trickster motif has a long history in the oral and written literature of numerous cultures, and its physical appearance has taken on the form of the coyote, raven, rabbit, monkey, and ant, depending on the country and ethnic group. In her work, Smith focuses on the use of tricksters in the writings of Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison, and Maxine Hong Kingston, three well-known female writers. According to C. Packard, reviewing the book in Choice, Smith adds a "feminist analysis" to the discussion of tricksters in literature by her very sampling of writers. Also, by using these three writers, Smith narrows her book to three ethnic literatures: Native American, African American, and Asian American.

For Alice Hall Petry, reviewing Writing Tricksters in the African American Review, "the one element of Smith's study with the potential to be a vital contribution to the study of ethnic literature is the idea of the 'trickster aesthetic.'" For Smith, such an aesthetic is central to non-Western storytelling traditions and is now beginning to powerfully inform American writing as well. This aesthetic can be seen, according to Smith, in the use of multiple voices, loose ends, figurative masks, and contradictory points of view, all of which, as Petry noted, force the reader "to participate in the novel's action." Writing in MELUS, Batya Weinbaum felt that Smith's work would "undoubtedly . . . be a guide to anyone who teaches the novels discussed." However, Weinbaum had some criticism for the work, including its "too narrow" definition of ethnicity, as well as the lack of a clear "list of characteristics of the trickster aesthetic . . . to give a complete map of what readers might expect to seek out." Similarly, Beverly Lanier Skinner, writing in American Literature, noted that "while Smith's readings are generally insightful and occasionally inspired, her use of the term trickster is often confusing." Packard, though, was more positive, finding the book to be an "important contribution and stimulus for the growing body of multicultural critical texts."