Growing up in the Deep South in the late 1950s, writer Patricia Foster was taught that a woman's body was her way of speaking her worth: restricted linguistically and sexually, women were to dress appropriately and decoratively and act like ladies at all times.

When, in 1986, Foster returned to the South to teach a course in women's literature at a state university, she was amazed at the dissatisfaction young women felt about their bodies - even after the women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s turned gender expectations upside down. "I'd rather have five pounds off my thighs than an A in this class," one woman confessed, and others agreed. Given the choice between mental stimulus and physical perfection, most students said they would choose the latter.

How and why, Foster wondered, had women returned to such a fragile status?

Minding the Body, a provocative collection of fiction and nonfiction by acclaimed women writers, addresses this question and others stemming from the complex and peculiar relationship women have with their bodies. The narratives in this anthology - from writers as diverse as Naomi Wolf, Rosemary Bray, Margaret Atwood, Hanan al-Shaykh, and Kathryn Harrison - address the psychological and political aspects of a woman's body in today's culture.

In "Out of Habit, I Start Apologizing," Pam Houston celebrates the strong female body; Janet Burroway explores the older woman's sense of desire/eroticism in "Changes"; and Judith Ortiz Cofer's "The Story of My Body" looks at the Puerto Rican girl's coming-of-age in America and her comparison of her body to that of the Caucasian girl.

Combining some of the best voices in contemporary women's literature with a subject of eternal interest - some might even say obsession - Minding the Body is important and much-needed reading for women who seek to understand the relationship between their physical and emotional selves.