The bear woman / Karolina Ramqvist ; translated by Saskia Vogel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ramqvist, Karolina, 1976- author.

Contributor:

Vogel, Saskia, translator.

Thea Marie Garfield Fund.

Standardized Title:

Björnkvinnan. English

Language:

English

Swedish

Subjects (All):

Roberval, Marguerite de.

Pioneers--Canada--Fiction.

Pioneers.

Women pioneers--Canada--Fiction.

Women pioneers.

Castaways--Canada--Fiction.

Castaways.

Motherhood.

Authorship.

History.

maternity.

authorship.

history (discipline).

Travel.

Roberval, Marguerite de--Fiction.

Ramqvist, Karolina, 1976---Travel.

Ramqvist, Karolina.

Canada--History--To 1763 (New France)--Fiction.

Canada.

Medical Subjects:

Authorship.

History.

Genre:

Fiction.

Historical fiction.

History.

Novels.

Physical Description:

253 pages ; 21 cm

Edition:

First North American edition.

Place of Publication:

Toronto : Coach House Books, [2022]

Summary:

"Blending autofiction and the essay, The Bear Woman takes us on a journey of feminism and literary detective work that spans centuries and continents. In the 1540s, a young French noblewoman, Marguerite de la Rocque, was abandoned by her guardian in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence with her maidservant and her lover. In present-day Stockholm, an author and mother of three becomes captivated by the image of Marguerite sheltered in a dark cave all alone after her companions have died. The image is an anchor that soon becomes an obsession. She must find out the real story of the woman she calls the Bear Woman. But so much in this history is written so as to gloss over male violence. And that maps and other sources she consults are at times undecipherable. We meet fellow chroniclers of the Bear Woman, such as Queen Marguerite de Navarre, the most powerful woman in Europe, but whose Heptameron (1558) was unjustly dismissed as the writings of a dabbler. We follow the author on a research trip to Paris where she is accompanied by her teenage daughter and the specter of herself as a younger woman, to dinner tables in Mexico and Sweden, to the map division of the New York Public Library, and to bookstores and celebrity hotels in California during the wildfires. Ramqvist explores what it means to write history, how women's stories have been told, and wonders, in this time of narrative fatigue and a new wave feminism that the author does not quite relate to, where we have gotten ourselves to."-- Provided by publisher.

Notes:

Translation of: Björnkvinnan.

Includes bibliographical references (page 249)

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Thea Marie Garfield Fund.

Other Format:

Online version: Ramqvist, Karolina, 1976- Björnkvinnan. English. Bear woman.

ISBN:

9781552454312

1552454312

OCLC:

1252413349

Publisher Number:

99990160610