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This collection of essays and representative selections of literature seeks to enlarge the history of American women's literature. Polish and American scholars reflect upon questions of gender and ethnicity that have framed the experiences of all women, but particularly those of Polish descent. The original texts accompanying each essay - fiction, memoirs, poems, and essays - represent many aspects of the women's identities: secular and spiritual, Jewish and gentile, immigrant and native, 19th-century and contemporary. Viewed from literary, historical, political artistic, social and gender perspectives, the writings of Polish American women offer a record of cultural sensitivities of those cut off from their homeland and twice removed from the American mainstream.