Bloom, H. ed., 1994. Native American Women Writers. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers. A collection of introductory essays, biographical information and a wide selection of critical explorations of more than twelve authors in this field.

Hanson, E. I., 1989. Forever There: Race and Gender in Contemporary Native American Fiction. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc. A critical evaluation of gender and race by Native American writers that includes exploration of female writers such as Louise Erdich and Paula Gunn Allen.

McCarthy, D. F., 1997. Reconstructing the Family in Contemporary American Fiction. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc. An exploration of themes including the nuclear family to the reconstruction of the family in contemporary fiction. This book focuses predominantly on male writers, but has a useful essay on Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple.

Millard, K., 1998. Contemporary American Fiction: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. An introductory text to this genre that explores a range of themes such as gender and family. Contains two useful chapters on Alice Walker and Toni Morrison.

Millard, K., 2007. Coming of Age in Contemporary American Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. An exploration of the characteristics of ‘coming of age’ in contemporary fiction. This text mainly explores fiction by male writers, but has chapters on Marilynne Robinson and Elizabeth Wurtzel.

Parkinson-Zamora, L., 1998. Contemporary American Women Writers: Gender, Class and Ethnicity. New York: Longman. A collection of essays that examines identity and community in the fiction of a number of female writers including Walker and Morrison amongst others.

Pearlman, M. ed. 1989. American Women Writing Fiction: Memory, Identity, Family, Space. Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press. A critical examination of the reoccurrence of the writing about memory, identify and the family in the fiction of American female writers.

Udel, L. J., 2007. “Revising Strategies: The Intersection of Literature and Activism in Contemporary Native Women’s Writing”, Studies in American Indian Literatures: The Journal of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures, 19: 2, p. 62-82. A clear article that explores the ways in which Native American women writers use their writing as a form of activism to educate the non-Native reader to the violence of Euro-American expansion.