"Flo said to watch out for White Slavers." The opening line. There's Flo with her tales of abuse and mistreatment, with the litany of threats, near and far, posed to women and girls. She also warns Rose about the retired undertaker, with his also-retired hearse, about the the way that he
In "Health and Guidance" class, the teacher goes up and down the rows, asking what the students had for breakfast. On the surface of it, she is checking to see if they are keeping to Canada's Food Rules, making solid nutritional choices. In fact, this is one more way in
The stories in Birds of a Lesser Paradise are so consistently good that I almost didn't want to read them. Beginning Megan Mayhew Bergman's collection, I had no expectations. She's been much-anthologized, and has a nice list of publishing credits, but that doesn't guarantee a good match between
This story was originally published in Ms in September 1978, under the title "The Honeyman's Daughter". Thinking about this changes the focus of the story somewhat because the honey-dumper goes around cleaning toilets. That's his job. And Cora is his granddaughter. Rose greatly admires Cora (and Rose is at the heart
Looking ahead to the linked stories in Who Do You Think You Are? readers might recall her earlier collection Lives of Girls and Women. Alice Munro has consistently said that it wasn't in her to write a novel, but these collections of linked stories could work as introductions
