Writing red

Anyone who believes feminist writing went quiet after 1920 will find this collection makes the opposite case. Its 36 contributors were politically radical women writing through the 1930s, and the anthology brings together their fiction, poetry, and reportage in one volume.

The lineup includes Muriel Rukeyser, Margaret Walker, Josephine Herbst, Tillie Olsen, Tess Slesinger, Agnes Smedley, and Meridel Le Sueur. Many of the other writers will be unfamiliar to today's readers, among them working-class Black and white women whose work has been hard to find.

The pieces move across a wide range of subjects: sexuality and family life, race, class, and patriarchy, and the arguments of party politics. Together they show how these writers questioned, cared about, and acted on the social conditions of their time.