The Female Complaint: Tales of Unruly Women

Fiction. Women's Studies. The thirty-six stories in this anthology, all by women authors, center around female characters who follow their own paths and tell the powers-that-be what they don't want to hear. These women stand up for themselves, for each other, for their beliefs. The characters include housewives and high school students, a stand-up comedian, an artist, an attendant at a nursing home, several scientists. There's a woman who turns into a leopard; a chemist who comes to the rescue of a resuscitated Isaac Newton; and a female giant who metes out rough justice in a futuristic penal colony for male criminals. Navigating a fine line between anger and laughter, these are raucous stories of solidarity, resistance, transformation, and joy. Contributors include Gina Ochsner, Kathleen Alcalá, Theodora Goss, Kim Chinquee, and Katherine Vaz.

"Thirty-six spellbinding stories about the active, spirited lives of women... Throughout each is the common denominator of an active female character who embarks on her own hero's journey... With prose that ranges from the humorous to the lyric and forms that range from the real to the magical, here is a vital addition to contemporary literature."—Kirkus
"This is more than women being unruly: this is women being courageous, outrageous, brutally honest, and more than anything, talented. The stories sing off the page—and then turn into a howl of rage, delight and hope. THE FEMALE COMPLAINT is a collection that deserves to be taught, and read, for years to come."—Rene Denfeld, author of The Enchanted

"Forty years ago when women blazed literary trails, they were paths through the woods where no one heard the trees falling. This time on a paved road through landscapes urban, suburban, exurban, and rural, these women are still throwing themselves and their lives out into new thematic territory."—Cris Mazza, author of Various Men Who Knew Us as Girls and co-editor of Chick-Lit: Postfeminist Fiction

"Often unsettling in the best sense, these stories cross cultures and mental states... Compelling and ambitious stories dedicated to honoring the more turbulent desires."—Lee Upton, author of The Tao of Humiliation: Stories and Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles: Poems