This book pays tribute to the diversity and vitality of American women writers through more than a century, and to the courage and resilience of young women through a compelling range of life experiences. Selected from the work of two dozen distinguished writers published by The Feminist Press, these stories explore the resonant theme of coming of age as a woman. How do girls and young women discover -- or create -- a sense of who they are and who they may become? How do they recognise what their lives have taught them and envision what their lives may someday be? How do they come to terms with what it means to be a woman in the world -- and imagine how they may change the world as women? The book offers an engaging, multicultural collection of fiction and memoir written between the 1870s and the 1990s.