More Stories We Tell The Best Contemporary Short Stories by North American Women

by MARTIN, WENDY

• ISBN13: 9780375714504
• ISBN10: 0375714502
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-04-27
• Publisher: Pantheon

Summary

These 28 stories explore the diverse terrain of women's experiences as mothers, daughters, wives, lovers, artists, and friends. Ellen Gilchrist's "Light Can Be Both Wave and Particle" chronicles the touching romance between a young schoolteacher from Arkansas and an earnest Chinese medical student; Alice McDermott's "Enough" introduces us to a woman with an insatiable desire for ice cream. Here, too, are stories by such classic practitioners of the form as Sandra Cisneros, Grace Paley, Alice Munro, and Joyce Carol Oates, and by writers more recently arrived on the literary scene, including Jhumpa Lahiri, ZZ Packer, and Marisa Silver. In her introduction, Wendy Martin describes this anthology as "wrestling with the cultural and social prohibitions that have been with us for centuries." Taken together, these stories provide a collective mirror of the remarkable transformations that have occurred in the lives of women in the final decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.

Author Biography

WENDY MARTIN is chair of the Department of English at Claremont Graduate University. She is also the editor of We Are the Stories We Tell (available from Pantheon). She lives in Berkeley, California.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Editor's Introduction	xi
Toni Cade Bambara
The Lesson (1972)	3	(9)
Ann Beattie
The Burning House (1979)	12	(18)
Bobbie Ann Mason
Big Bertha Stories (1982)	30	(18)
Amy Hempel
Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep (1985)	48	(11)
Ellen Gilchrist
Light Can Be Both Wave and Particle (1989)	59	(24)
Stephanie Vaughn
Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog (1990)	83	(16)
Margaret Atwood
Hairball (1991)	99	(16)
Amy Bloom
Silver Water (1991)	115	(11)
Sandra Cisneros
Never Marry a Mexican (1991)	126	(16)
Joyce Carol Oates
Love, Forever (1992)	142	(4)
Jamaica Kincaid
Song of Roland (1993)	146	(10)
Andrea Barrett
The Littoral Zone (1996)	156	(11)
Mary Gaitskill
Tiny, Smiling Daddy (1997)	167	(15)
Gish Jen
Who's Irish? (1998)	182	(13)
Lorrie Moore
Dance in America (1998)	195	(11)
Lynn Freed
Ma, a Memoir (1999)	206	(5)
Jhumpa Lahiri
A Temporary Matter (1999)	211	(20)
Alice McDermott
Enough (2000)	231	(8)
Alice Munro
Floating Bridge (2000)	239	(26)
ZZ Packer
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (2000)	265	(23)
Marisa Silver
The Passenger (2000)	288	(19)
Louise Erdrich
The Shawl (2001)	307	(8)
Andrea Lee
The Birthday Present (2001)	315	(19)
Grace Paley
My Father Addresses Me on the Facts of Old Age (2002)	334	(11)
About the Authors	345