The voices of 20 women from working-class backgrounds are heard in this collection of essays. Each of the women has lived through the process of academic socialisation - as both student and teacher - and each has thought long and deeply about her experiences from an explicitly feminist perspective.

The next four sections contain essays on belonging by Saundra Gardner, Donna Langston, Valerie Miner and Joanna Kadi; on individual experiences by Bell Hooks, Laura H. Weaver, Patricia Clark Smith, Jacqueline Burnside and Suzanne Sowinska; on teaching by Pam Annas, Cheryl Fish, Elisabeth J. Johnson and Rose Zimbardo; and on language and cultural politics by Pamela A. Fox, Sharon O'Dair, Pat Belanoff, Elizabeth A. Fay and Hephzibah Roskelly. The book concludes with an epilogue by Michelle M. Tokarczyk.