Until recently, the combination of a Cuban old boys' network and an ideological emphasis on "tough" writing worked to keep fiction written by Cuban women largely unknown and unread. Cubana, the U. S. edition of a groundbreaking 1996 anthology of Cuban women's fiction, introduces these once-ignored writers to a new audience. Havana editor and author Mirta Yanez unites sixteen stories into an impressive collection that reveals the exciting strength and variety of fiction by contemporary Cuban women - and offers a glimpse inside Cuba at this time of extreme economic difficulty and artistic renaissance. Many of these stories focus pointedly on economic and social conditions. Others - Magaly Sanchez's erotic fantasy "Catalina in the Afternoons" and Mylene Fernandez Pintado's psychologically deft "Anhedonia: A Story in Two Women" - reveal a nascent Cuban feminism. The Cuban-American writer Achy Obejas recreates the strange dual identity of the immigrant, while experimental stories like the playful and savvy "The Urn and the Name (A Light-hearted Tale)", written by E | Cubana by Ruth Behar, Paperback | Indigo Chapters