Wild women : contemporary short stories by women celebrating women /

A hyena who takes the place of an unwilling debutante at the debutante's ball; a woman, worn from years of family duties, who fixes her gaze on a visiting sister who's escaped her portion of the familial burden and turns her to stone; men who jealously vie for kitchen supremacy while their wives work outside their homes; a writer who's researching sex-show performers at the Triple Treat Theater--all these and more are to be found in this compilation of short fiction by contemporary women that examines the wild-woman archetype characterized in various ways by the wanderer, the dreamer, and the story-teller. Editor Thomas distributes the contents (which include stories by Alice Walker, Anne Rice, Margaret Atwood, Erica Jong, Isabel Allende, Andrea Dworkin, and Fay Weldon and stunning supershorts by Kathy Page and Veronica Vera) into eight topical sections on the wild woman per se, the intruder mate, empowerment and self-esteem, sex, extreme behavior, creativity and life phases, rage, and endurance, respectively. What with its contemporary interpretations of archetypal themes, a good addition for the sake of women's studies as well as literature. ~--Whitney Scott

Capitalizing on the appeal of Clarissa Pinkola Este's popular Women Who Run with the Wolves (LJ 6/15/92), editor Thomas has prepared this volume of short stories that ``bring together modern examples of the warrior guises of Wild Woman.'' Thomas, a novelist and writing instructor whose own ``All Strapped In'' is included in the volume, divides the works into eight thematic sections-empowerment, sex, and righteous rage, among them-and provides informative introductory remarks to each section. The short stories come from a politically correct mix of contemporary women writers that include Isabel Allende, Margaret Atwood, Pam Houston, Alice Walker, and a number of emerging voices. It's not an essential purchase, but your Wild Women readers will want to check it out.-Debbie Bogenschutz, Cincinnati Technical Coll. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.