Published in 2017 by the Feminist Press
at the City University of New York
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406
New York, NY 10016
First Feminist Press edition 2017
Introduction copyright © 2017 by Renée Watson
Copyright © 1981 by Ethel Johnston Phelps
Cover and interior illustrations copyright © 2017 by Suki Boynton
All rights reserved.
This book was made possible thanks to a grant from New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First printing October 2017
Cover and text design by Suki Boynton
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title.
ISBN: 978-1-9369-3205-4
To Carol Levin
and Ranice Crosby
for more reasons than
I could ever list
CONTENTS
Preface by Ethel Johnston Phelps
The Old Woman and the Rice Cakes
The Husband Who Stayed at Home
ABOUT THE EDITOR and ILLUSTRATOR
RENÉE WATSON
We cannot create what we can’t imagine.
—LUCILLE CLIFTON
Let’s imagine a world where women are seen as whole beings and not as body parts, quests to be conquered, or damsels to be rescued. Let’s imagine a world where women save their own days, save the world, even.
Let’s imagine women as hunters.
I have always been drawn to female characters who chase, pursue, explore, interrogate, rescue. Kill, even. Every good story has a character who desperately wants something. But too often the desires of female characters revolve around clichés—gaining the affection of a man or wanting to be popular at almost any cost.
But not here. This is a collection of tales that have imagined worlds where women are on the hunt, where women are in search of their own independence, of finding what will truly quench their physical, spiritual, and emotional hunger. These are women who will sacrifice and risk all for who and what they love, what they need, what they want. They are wise and they are strong. They are like the women I know in my real life who are often criticized, undervalued, silenced, or invisible.
Here, in these pages, a space has been created for their stories to be told. I believe we so desperately need these kinds of spaces—books, classrooms, writing workshops, community centers, homes—where women from all backgrounds can be seen and heard. These imaginary and actual spaces influence each other. If reality is flawed with sexist stereotypes and expectations, I should be able to read a story, a poem, and see what the world could be when characters prove to be more than those assumptions. When literature fails to show the myriad of experiences of what it means to act like
