This magnificent, handsome, handful of an anthology . . .* includes sixty-one substantial selections from the twentieth-century literature of women's lives: autobiographies, journals, and memoirs. As varied in humanity as in geography,** the women whose life stories are collected here include the famous-Maya Angelou, Maxine Hong Kingston, Anne Frank, Virginia Woolf-and the surprising-Emma Mashinini, a black South African labor organizer; Onnie Lee Logan, an Alabama granny midwife; Sara Suleri, an expatriate in America who reflects hilariously on the language of food in her native Pakistan.

Destined to become a classic, this treasury of women's lives, brimming with intelligence, passion, wit, and determination, is a celebration of life itself.

*Hungry Mind Review


**Washington Post Book World


Library Journal