cover image International Feminist Fiction

International Feminist Fiction

. Crossing Press, $20.95 (333pp) ISBN 978-0-89594-556-3

As the title suggests, these 23 stories and one novella (all written in English or ably translated) offer glimpses into women's lives throughout the world--Asia and New Zealand, both Americas, the Mideast and the British Isles. Alternately realistic, poetic and fantastical, the fictions also travel from childhood to old age, from self-examination to social turmoil, from love (heterosexual and lesbian) to betrayal. A woman breaks out of an Orwellian dystopia with questionable success (The Awakening by Pearlie McNeil); a young immigrant poignantly reveals her loneliness as she reconstructs a cake her mother made (Burn Sugar by Marlene Philip); a wife quakes as she awaits her husband's reaction to the birth of another daughter (Amina by Shirley Saad). The most masterful tale, the novella The Threshing Floor by Barbara Burford, traces a lesbian black sculptor's recovery of hope after her white lover's death. These narratives are uneven in quality, and they will elicit a wide range of responses: for instance, the justice wreaked in Broken Threads, by Maria-Antonia Oliver, may provoke winces as well as cheers. As Miner's introduction indicates, however, the gathering together of these 24 distinctive voices is an alltoo-unusual event. (Oct.)