In a novel based on Chinese Cinderella tales, fourteen-year-old stepchild Xing-Xing endures a life of neglect and servitude, as her stepmother cruelly mutilates her own child's feet so that she alone might marry well.
When eleven-year-old Shabanu, the daughter of a nomad in the Cholistan Desert of present-day Pakistan, is pledged in marriage to an older man whose money will bring prestige to the family, she must either accept the decision, as is the custom, or risk the consequences of defying her father's wishes.
Presents approximately 150 primary source documents, such as speeches, legislation, memoirs, newspaper articles, and interviews, related to gender issues and sexuality between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries.
Seventeen year-old Angelica Voglia lives in seventeenth-century Rome and has the voice of an angel, but because the pope forbids women to sing in public, she must escape to Queen Christina's palace to become a court singer.
Divorces school teacher Allison Banks falls in love with Dana Stevens, her summer university instructor, but when Dana reveals that he plans to have a sex change operation, Allison must judge whether their relationship can survive, even amidst the fallout from the people of their small town.
Miranda's three children thoroughly enjoy their huge, overdressed baby sitter/cleaning woman who is actually their father in disguise, and they dread the day when their mother discovers Madame Doubtfire is really her ex-husband.
