Growing Up Female: Stories By Women Writers From the American Mosaic

by Susan Cahill

Contributions from Amy Tan, Gloria Naylor, Susan Minot, Mary Crow Dog and other leading authors focus on the experience of passing from girlhood into womanhood in the late 20th century. African, Asian, and Native American authors offer wide cultural and class diversity.

Trespass (from How the Garcia girls lost their accents) / Julia Alvarez --
My Lucy friend who smells like corn / Sandra Cisneros --
Sins leave scars / J. California Cooper --
The power of prayer / Elizabeth Cullinan --
Aimlessness (from Lakota woman) / Mary Crow Dog --
from Riding in cars with boys : Confessions of a bad girl who makes good / Beverly Donofrio --
From Truck / Katherine Dunn --
Vito loves Geraldine / Janice Eidus --
Aunt Moon's young man / Linda Hogan --
What means switch / Gish Jen --
New African (from Sarah Phillips) / Andrea Lee --
The ilui / Diane Levenberg --
Mary Emmet (from To die for) / Joyce Maynard --
Lust / Susan Minot --
Kiswana Browne (from The women of Brewster Place) / Gloria Naylor --
First love / R.A. Sasaki --
Two kinds (from The Joy luck club) / Amy Tan --
The way things will be / Judy Troy --
Fishbone / Donna Trussell --
Tears of autumn / Yoshiko Uchida --
Getting the facts of life / Paulette Childress White --
The miracle / Anzia Yezierska --
My father's jokes / Patricia Zelver

96 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published September 1, 1993

About the author

SUSAN CAHILL has published several travel books on France, Italy, and Ireland, including Sacred Paris, Hidden Gardens of Paris and The Streets of Paris. She is the editor of the bestselling Women and Fiction series and author of the novel Earth Angels. She spends a few months in Paris every year. MARION RANOUX, a native Parisienne, is an experienced freelance photographer and translator into French of Czech literature.

Reviews

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would recommend this book to everyone, it pictures lots of different realities but they all have something(s) in common, with which I relate in different ways.

[Ivy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Growing Up Female is an anthology of very forgetable stories that make up this "American mosaic". There are short stories and excerpts from larger works by authors like Amy Tan, Gloria Naylor, and Julia Alvarez.

This book didn't resonate with me very much because the stories are dated and the situations not ones I could relate to. One of the stories by author Sandra Cisneros called "My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn" is so bad that I should have seen it coming just from the nutty title. Actually I did. When she started talking about picking knee scabs and eating it, I knew skipping that one was in order. How it got into an anthology with Gloria Naylor and Amy Tan is beyond me.

Though many of the stories are mediocre at best, there are some diamonds in the rough. Amy Tan is always a pleasure to read and her excerpt from "The Joy Luck Club", dealing with difficult mother/daughter relationships, is no exception. Other notable stories are Diane Levenberg's "The Ilui", a very intelligent piece about a young writer taking her first steps to a great career and dealing with life as it comes; and, among others, Gloria Naylor's "The Women of Brewster Place", my personal favorite about a young African American woman who feels her mother does not understand her need to embrace her blackness. But her mother, a formidable lady understands all too well, and knows her daughter much better than the young lady knows herself.

This anthology is cited for women's studies and illustrates the lives of women from different socio-economic backgrounds that represent what it is to be a female in America.

B read.

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many good morsels in here!

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been on our shelves for years. Susan Cahill is a more than capable editor and her author bios are insightful and provide interesting context for the pieces chosen. I prefer short stories to excerpts, but this was a very good collection.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read it with friends. It was extra fun with cool people to discuss with.