Talking Back and Acting Out is a collection of writing by women who actively negotiate, reconstruct, and re-imagine their identities in opposition to dominant cultural constructions. Stories in the mass media often reduce women to stereotypes grounded in ideas about social class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, and nationality. These media images are not only limiting, but the stories are often couched in victimization and powerlessness. This collection explores individual women's refusal to be reduced to hegemonic constructions, prescribed identities, and limited possibilities. These essays highlight stories of women who push the boundaries of what it means to be a woman in this multicultural, yet white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist society. Talking Back and Acting Out offers stories of women's resistance against the odds - women who have not only survived but thrived, and who have not only made a difference in their own lives but in the lives of others.