Women on the Edge: Ethnicity and Gender in Short Stories by American Women

This collection of essays explores the intertwining social conditions of ethnicity and gender as they are represented in short stories by contemporary American women. The introduction to the collection explains the theoretical understanding of gender and ethnicity as social constructions that provide a context for individual experience. The collection brings together analyses of short stories that focus on major ethnic cultures in the United States: Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Japanese American, Asian American, African American, Jewish American, white Protestant American, and Native American. Each essay testifies to the struggles of women within patriarchal cultures in America, and each explores how different ethnic identities set the terms of these gender struggles. The essays also reveal the complications of other important social issues, such as class, sexual preference, and religion. Individually, each essay contributes a significant new analysis of a short story or collection by an important contemporary American writer. Together, the essays indicate the complexity and significance of this cultural approach to women's fiction, demonstrate the critical theories that are currently developing in the fields of gender and ethnic studies, and suggest that neither ethnicity nor gender can legitimately be considered alone.

M. Charlene Ball is the Administrative Coordinator of the Women's Studies Institute at Georgia State University in Atlanta Marta Caminero-Santangelo is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Kansas Jackson. Nancy L. Chick teaches multicultural American literature at the University of Georgia. Corinne H. Dale is Professor of English at Belmont University David Goldstein-Shirley teaches at University of Washington, Bothell Lakshmi Holmstrom is a freelance writer and translator Deborah L. Madsen holds the Chair of English at South Bank University, London Elaine Orr is Associate Professor of English at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina J.H.E. Paine is Professor of Literature at Belmont University Kathy Rugoff is an Associate Professor in English at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington Veronica C. Wang is Associate Professor of English at East Carolina University