Monday, December 30, 2013

Great Short Stories By American Women (Edited by Candace Ward)


I love this book cover. It's gorgeous, especially when you consider the fact that it's a 90s cover. The majority of books published in the 1990s tend to have putrid covers. Another great thing about this book is that I got it for free from a professor who was cleaning out his book collection.

I enjoyed every story in this collection, although I skipped "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman because I read it only a few short months ago. (I loved it). In total, there are 13 stories in the volume. I was most taken with Louisa May Alcott's "Transcendental Wild Oats" and Alice Dunbar Nelson's "The Stones of the Village." I also appreciated "A Jury Of Her Peers" by Susan Glaspell.

"Transcendental Wild Oats" tells the story of an experimental community in which a small group attempts to live without animal products while living off the land. Ultimately, a great deal of the strain of survival is placed on the women within the group, as the men are too busy trying to find their purpose or callings in the community.

"The Stones of the Village" tells the story of a boy who is rejected by both the blacks and whites in his community. Eventually, he founds a new life elsewhere and spends his whole like hiding his identity from his wife, his friends and the public.

"A Jury Of Her Peers," describes the examination of the house of a woman who has been arrested for the murder of her husband. While the men look of evidence, their wives examine the kitchen and the woman's sewing basket, while considering what they could have done to prevent the downfall of the woman.

Chances are, you won't stumble across this particular volume, but perhaps you as a reader can find other volumes with one or many of these stories included. Below is a complete list of the thirteen stories.



No comments:

Post a Comment