In this collection of acclaimed contemporary female writers akin to Women Who Run with the Wolves, the independent, unconventional woman is glorified as an icon of liberation by both women and men. Margaret Atwood's Half-Hanged Mary offers a verse tribute to a woman wrongly tried for witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts. Joyce Carol Oates's Haunted describes the bond between two young girls, one black, one white, in a small southern town.

Alice Walker's A Woman Is Not a Potted Plant praises the woman unfettered by civilization, roaming free in nature.