The Stories We Tell: Classic True Tales by America’s Greatest Women Journalists

No, there’s not something for everyone in this collection. To say so is trite as well as wrong. But The Stories We Tell, edited by Patsy Sims, author of several well-received non-fiction books, embraces human diversity, covers emotions from admiration to deep shock, and depicts meetings with the famous and with those whose names never make the headlines. The pages resound distinctively: high school cheerleaders with charmed futures torn apart in their small New York town by a series of rapes, kidnapping, and murder. And a little boy emotionally, psychologically out of control almost 24-7, finding solace in a gentle dog. Enjoy the privilege of behind-the-scenes interviews with Nureyev; Yuja Wang, the sexy and defiant young genius Chinese pianist; a country-western singer; and a jazz great interviewed in their “civvies” away from the footlights.

Most pieces run about twenty pages. None hit harder than Mimi Schwartz’s blow-by-blow account of the Planned Parenthood debacle in Texas. There’s poignancy to be found as well–a courageous suicide, a new identity born of a reconstructed face, a 12-year-old boy in a commonplace working-class family whose mother is convinced he will climb out of poverty into success.

The pages reveal the legacy of Janet Flanner, Margaret Bourne-White, and earlier women journalists, their writing undoubtedly as appealing to men as to their own “fair sex.”