Amanda Zink Publishes Book

Amanda Zink, an associate professor in Idaho State University’s
Department of English and Philosophy, recently published a book exploring the history of
interactions between women in the American West.
“Fictions of Western American Domesticity: Indian, Mexican, and Anglo Women in
Print Culture, 1850-1950” interprets literary texts that discuss how domesticity and housekeeping
shaped the culture of the West. Zink refers to a variety of texts: novels, magazine articles,
memoirs, cookbooks, essays written by students at the Indian boarding schools and even
pediatrician examination cards.
In examining these texts, Zink hoped to understand how women slipped the restraints of
conventional roles like motherhood and homemaking and which women could resist these roles.
“Who has the option to be educated?” she asked. “To make her own choices? To have a
role in public life instead of just in the private life of home and family? To choose not to be a
mother? To be an American? The central question the book answers, then, also became: ‘how
does a woman’s race or ethnicity shape the answers to these questions?’”
Zink found that as many Anglo women achieved liberation from conventional gender
roles and moved to the West, they imposed the same gender roles on Native and Mexican
women to Americanize and Christianize them. At the same time, Native and Mexican women
wrote back to these Anglo women, arguing for a more diverse definition of the “American
woman” that would include their experiences.
“Fictions of Western American Domesticity” first took shape during Zink’s doctoral
studies in 2009. In the nine years that have passed since its inception, Zink has consulted
countless magazines, newspapers, paintings and other preserved texts. For example, she spent
weeks at Chicago’s Newberry Library reading magazines and newspapers written by Native
students at boarding schools across the U.S. and at the University of Illinois library paging
through a century of Good Housekeeping issues.
“The research for this book was actually a wonderful experience,” she said. “Not only did
I get to spend time doing what I love the most about my discipline — reading stories! — but I
also spent countless hours digging through archives to look for instances where Anglo, Native
and Mexican women were having conversations about domesticity in the West.”
The book is now available for purchase from the University of New Mexico Press and on
Amazon.com. There will also be a public book reception for Zink this fall. Zink said she hopes it
will be enjoyed by academics and layman history buffs alike.
“I think almost anyone could find in this book something of interest and relevance to
living in the West,” she said. “Mostly, I hope the people who read it find themselves re-thinking
their perceptions of the West and its many and diverse inhabitants.”