These essays examine the writings of 10 women authors, who are reshaping American literary tradition. The contributors examine how Ann Beattie, Annie Dillard, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Cynthia Ozick, Grace Paley, Marge Piercy, Anne Redmon, Anne Tyler, and Alice Walker appropriate and transform generic norms and revise literary tradition to make it more inclusive of female experience, vision and expression. They discover diverse narrative strategies. Beattie, Dillard, Paley and Redmon rely heavily on narrative gaps, surfaces and silences. Walker and Kingston use verbal assertiveness to depict the gradual empowerment of their female protagonists. Ozick and Tyler disrupt conventional reader expectations of the "antinovel" and the "family novel" respectively. Morrison and Piercy find traditional narrative forms suitable to feminist purposes. ISBN 0-8131-1558-2 :