Women and Fiction: Stories by and about Women

Description

From Kate Chopin s turn-of-the-century Lousiana, to Gertrude Stein s war-time Paris, to Alice Walker s modern-day America, here are twenty-six short stories by the finest women writers of the twentieth century. These well-known and well-loved authors people their stories with vibrant female characters, from all over the world and all walks of life. Separately, each of these stories bears the mark of a skilled writer. Together, they celebrate woman in her many roles as daughter, mother, worker, wife, lover, sister, and friend. In Tillie Olsen s classic, I Stand Here Ironing, a single mother considers her success in raising a daughter. In Eudora Welty s The Worn Path, an African-American grandmother meets with grace the impudence of a young, white man. In Alice Munro s The Office, a wife who has too many distractions to write at home rents a room in town, only to be constantly interrupted by her landlord. Superbly written, and at once poignant and ironic, these insightful stories capture the essence of being a woman in all its similarity, and all its diversity.

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