Competition: A Feminist Taboo?

Collected here are works of fiction, poetry, reportage and theory by women who wrote in the '30s. Some of the women are well known. For example, Josephine Herbst offers a vivid account of a visit to ""North America's first Soviet'' in Cuba as well as a short story, also set in Cuba, about a leftist American reporter whose husband has left her for another woman. Other authors represented here are so unknown that their biographies note only various journals in which their work appeared. Among the more interesting pieces are Edith Manuel Durham's short story ``Deepening Dusk,'' about a young woman's confusion over her racial identity, and Ramona Lowe's ``The Woman in the Window,'' about how a black cook must justify to her children her undignified but relatively well-paying work situation. Other contributors include Meridel Le Sueur, Agnes Smedley, Tess Slesinger, Muriel Rukeyser, Tillie Olsen and Anna Louise Strong. While informative, the editors' comments have a tone of cheerless dogma. Still, this is an important, enlightening contribution to feminist and leftist history. (February)