SOURCE: "Countering Culture," in Women's Review of Books, Vol. 11, No. 6, March, 1984, pp. 11-12.

In the following excerpt, Frost reviews Materialism and explores Graham's manipulation of Western philosophy, praising her handling of difficult ideas.

Jorie Graham, a Euro-American, ponders … dilemmas centered on the theme of cultural inheritance. Uncomfortable with the perceived gap between language and the material world, she wonders, "Is this body the one / I know as me. How private these words?" These two books diverge in tone and intent, but they share a concern central to women's lives: wresting a female identity from the vast store of white male traditions.

In this fifth collection [Materialism], Graham is even more rigorously philosophical than in her previous books—most recently, Region of Unlikeness (1992) and The End of Beauty (1987). At stake here is the whole body of Western thought. The "materialism" of her title refers not to American middle-class values...