Written by scholars of Jewish literature, Women of the Word studies the works of women writers in Yiddish, Hebrew, English, and Spanish. The themes of repression and equivocal liberation resonate throughout, as the authors reflect on the silencing of the female voice in traditional Jewish culture. Even though individual essays reveal literary discoveries of self and forgings of identity by women amidst the competing demands of traditional norms, familial obligations, a significant number show the sad declines of women writers upon whom silence was reimposed. Several essays also look at the ways in which Jewish women are depicted by male writers from the Middle Ages through the mid-nineteenth century. A final chapter documents the ways in which memory, testimony, and survival affect the writing of women who have survived the Holocaust, a perspective frequently marginalized in studies of Holocaust literature.