A review by charlotte_owl
Great Short Stories by American Women by Candace Ward

5.0

This was a collection of famous classic short stories written by American Women. Before each short story was a short biography about the author, which was nice. I read it for the Read Women 2019 Challenge. Although these stories are classics, I had only ever read one before, which makes me sad. Probably my two favorite stories were "White Heron" by Sarah Orne Jewett, and "A Jury of Her Peers" by Susan Glaspell. White Heron has to do with a young girl deciding between a man she likes and the livelihood of a bird. A wonderful quote, paraphrased, is "She wondered why he shot the things which he seemed to like so much." And "A Jury of Her Peers" is about how two women are able to solve a mystery, while the men are not. This is because they were willing to pay attention to small details that the men thought were silly, because they were "women's things." Apparently the short story was first a play. I think that would be interesting to see. There were other fascinating short stories too. One focused on how a woman and man, after being engaged for many years, no longer wanted to be married. There was another story about domestic abuse. And other story about what it was like to be biracial in a segregated world. Altogether, I really enjoyed this.