Provocative and compulsively readable lively engaging and brilliantly representative The Oxford Book of Women s Writing in the United States presents short stories poems essays plays speeches performance pieces erotica diaries correspondence and even a few recipes from nearly one hundred of our best women writers. Reveling in the awareness that the best U.S. women s writing is quite simply some of the best in the world editors Linda Wagner-Martin and Cathy N. Davidson have chosen selections spanning four centuries and reflecting the rich variety of American women s lives. The collection embraces the perspectives of age and youth the traditional and the revolutionary the public and the private. Here is Judith Sargent Murray s 1790 essay On the Equality of the Sexes journalist Martha Gellhorn s Last Words on Vietnam 1987 and Mary Gordon s homage to the ghosts of Ellis Island More Than Just a Shrine ; powerful short stories by Zora Neale Hurston Edith Wharton Cynthia Ozick and Toni Morrison; letters from Abigail Adams Sarah Moore Grimke[accent] Emma Goldman and Georgia O Keeffe; Alice B. Toklas s recipe Bass for Picasso and erotic offerings from Anais Nin and Rita Mae Brown. The moving autobiography of Zitkala- Sa[accent] whose mother was a Sioux tells us more about otherness than any sociological treatise while Janice Mirikitani s and Nellie Wong s poems about being young Asian-American women like Alice Walker s meditation on the beauty of growing old speak to all readers. A thought-provoking introduction and descriptive headnotes explore the history of women s writing in ways that help the reader to understand the American women who have used language to change their worlds and to remember the past and as a means of etching their deepest fondest dreams. A joy to read The Oxford Book of Women s Writing in the United States is filled with eye-opening and unexpected selections. It is the perfect book for anyone fascinated by women s writing and women s lives.