The Oxford Book of Women's Writing in the United States
Edited by Linda Wagner-Martin and Cathy N. Davidson
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 gathered selections in The Oxford Book of Women's Writing in the United States spanning four centuries and reflecting the rich variety of American women's lives. This volume 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.
The collection embraces the perspectives of age and youth, the traditional and the revolutionary, the public and the private. Among many fascinating pieces, here is Judith Sargent Murray's 1790 essay "On the Equality of the Sexes," journalist Martha Gellhorn's "Last Words on Vietnam, 1987," and Alice Walker's meditation, "Longing to Die of Old Age." From powerful short stories by Zora Neale Hurston, Edith Wharton, Cynthia Ozick, and Toni Morrison to letters by Abigail Adams, Sarah Moore Grimkë, Emma Goldman, and Georgia O'Keeffe, the collection is filled with eye-opening and unexpected selections.