"This remarkable and wide-ranging collection, full of surprises, should encourage any woman who is trying to survive in a man's world, and enlighten any man who sincerely wants to understand contemporary women." Alison Lurie "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 famousMaya Angelou, Maxine Hong Kingston, Anne Frank, Virginia Woolfand the surprisingEmma 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.

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