Almost Touching the Skies: Women's Coming of Age Stories

The Feminist Press has published some astonishing material in its 30 years, some of which it can rightfully claim to have rediscovered. This moving anniversary volume, drawn partly from the house's backlist, contains skillfully drawn excerpts from many noteworthy longer works. A pantheon of girls abide here: city and country girls, sassy daddy's and mama's girls, girls trying to assimilate at home, school or summer camp, girls with crushes on girls, girls striving to be boys, girls desperately avoiding marriage and others convinced that ""only a man's love can save me and make me human again."" Though threaded with familiar themes of the onset of womanhood and the first flickerings of sexual awareness, there are other awakenings in these tales: the discovery of books and reading; sudden, headlong slides into rebellion against parents or teachers; and a dawning understanding of the power of money. The straightforward, unsentimental fictional voices of Jo Sinclair's 1950s tomboy, Vincent; Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's stoic heroine, Louisa; and Toni Cade Bambara's cocky and fleet-footed Squeaky, who always wins the 50-yard dash, complement the compelling real-life remembrances of such authors as Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker and Toni McNaron, whose 1992 memoir, I Dwell in Possibility, is excerpted here. Even the occasionally mawkish or dated piece provides an intriguing look at girls' inner lives. But those few false notes are outweighed by a number of beautifully quiet insights about the struggle to grow up. (May)