The articles included in this issue of Feminist Studies confront the problem of the representation of women of color. Eroticized; exoticized; turned into objects without names, histories, or languages, women of color have often been silenced, or romanticized, constrained by the conditions of an imperial world in which all resources needed for human development are marked and distorted by power differences. These power differences shape the problem of what counts as a representation of, about, or by women of color by feminists, regardlesss of their own backgrounds.

In her reading of the life story of a Mexican marketing woman, Ruth Behar ponders the confession of rage and redemption with which Esperanza presents her. Collaborator and confessor, anthropological guide and witness, Behar attempts an analysis that honors the violent spiritual and sexual economies within which one enraged and vindicated woman constructs a narrative of her own empowerment. How can an outsider interpret and share the story of a woman from another culture,. confronting both her oppression and her agency? Can the objectification of the circumstances in which an indigenous woman chooses to present herself be short-circuited by a scholar who is exquisitely conscious of Eurocentrism?

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Ruth Behar
Rage and Redemption: Reading the Life Story
of a Mexican Marketing Woman

Veena Talwar Oldenburg
Lifestyle As Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of
Lucknow, India

Shirley Geok-lin Lim
Japanese American Women's Life Stories: Maternality in Monica
Sone's Nisei Daughter and Joy Kogawa's Obasan

Anne E. Goldman
"I Made the Ink": (Literary) Production and Reproduction in
Dessa Rose and Beloved

Jewell Parker Rhodes
Marie Laveau, Voodoo Queen (Novel Excerpt)

irvin Cemil Schick
Representing Middle Eastern Women:
Feminism and Colonial Discourse (Review Essay)

Sonia E. Alvarez
Women's Participation in the Brazilian
"People's Church": A Critical Appraisal