While it provides an engaging tour of female voices, the new book feels flabbier, shallower, more diffuse. Some of its inquiries seem unrelated to feminism or anger, such as an interesting rumination on Adrienne Rich’s relation to her Judaism, and others seem overly familiar.

... these prolific and versatile women writers return to the field with incisive and redefining inquiries into the lives and work of diverse North American literary women who faced 'dizzying contradictions' and seemingly insurmountable opposition to propel feminism through the advances and backlashes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

... thoroughly researched.

... illuminating.

... comprehensive if uneven.