内容简介：
This collection of essays explores the intertwining social condition of ethnicity and gender as they are represented in short stories by contemporary American women. It 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. They also reveal the complications of other social issues, such as class, sexual preference and religion. Individually each essay contributes a significant approach to women's fiction, demonstrates 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.