CELEBRATING CANADIAN WOMEN: PROSE AND POETRY BY AND ABOUT WOMEN Edited by Greta Hofmann Nemiroff Markham (Ont.), Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1989. 406pp, paper, $35.00 ISBN 0-88902-6467. CIP Adult Reviewed by Pat Bolger. Volume 17 Number 4 1989 July Selecting from five hundred submissions and previously published works, Nemiroff has organized over a hundred poems and short stories under ten thematic headings, which cover the range of women's experience. Diversity is a key element of this celebration: there are superstars and unknowns, academics and women industrial workers, moderate feminists and militant lesbians, immigrants, blacks, and native Canadians, all piecing together their disparate visions of the lives of women in Canada today. Common to all is the admirable quality of the writing itself. There is one serious flaw. The biographical notes on the contributors have been carelessly edited: four names have been omitted and another is incorrectly spelled. Adolescent women would enjoy such poems as Pat Jasper's "Imprints" and "Long Way Home" (about delinquency and parental alcoholism), Heidi Muench's "Trying Hard" (a horrifying look at incest), Kristin Andrychuk's "Just Skin and Bones" (on anorexia), and Audrey Thomas' short story "Real Mothers," which belongs on any course on parenting skills. The collection as a whole, however, is overwhelming in sheer volume and is intended for adult readers. In high school libraries it would probably be used for teacher reference or background reading for the study of women's issues. Pat Bolger, Renfrew, Ont.