Having taken to task more than one guy for using parts of the female body to denote weakness, I was pleasantly surprised to see the title of a new anthology dedicated to girls with guts. That Takes Ovaries! Bold Females and Their Brazen Acts by Rivka Solomon celebrates women and girls who take a stand, risk their safety, and change the world-or at least the sexist attitudes that somehow survived the passing of the 20th century.

I admit to some skepticism when I learned the concept of the book. Would it be dominated by generation X riot grrls? The answer is absolutely not. Different races, religions, ages, economic classes, nationalities, sexual orientations, and physical abilities are all here, waiting for you to hear their stories.

With over sixty stories ranging in length from a paragraph to several pages, readers will find at least a couple of stories with which they strongly identify, and many more they simply enjoy. The account of a woman who talks an especially arrogant pimp out of his money made me smirk with appreciation, along with the line another author gives a barfly trying to buy her a drink (no, but could I have the money instead). The triumphs of a fat girl who works up the nerve to wear a tank-top, a woman in a wheelchair who leads an outdoor peeing protest to highlight the lack of accessible bathrooms at her seminary, and a junior-high girl who decides to show her gym class once and for all how she feels about shaving her legs made me smile.

The stories which really moved me, though, had more harrowing stakes. "Saving Mommy", or the " Night I Lost My Childhood" was a haunting description by d.h. wu of the night she convinced her abused mother to leave her husband rather than commit suicide. " Impossible Choices: From El Salvador to the United States," has given me a new respect for the suffering so-called illegal aliens face in their journey to the United States. Documenting It by Ruchira Gupta explains how the author succeeded in making a documentary on the sexual slave trade in India, ending up with a film that not only won prizes but persuaded fathers not to sell their daughters to traders.

To learn about the genesis of the book, the editor`s introduction is worth reading. I was surprised to learn that that only one third of the accepted stories are by professional writers. As a result, there is a rawness to many of these stories that is refreshing. I was not surprised to learn that two thirds of the 300 submissions the editor received were about women standing up to men trying to hurt them. Sexist attitudes lead to sexist practices.

It was a nice to see, then, information on organizations that help women listed at the end of many stories. A lot of books list resources though. That Takes Ovaries! is unique in that it calls for women to sponsor That Takes Ovaries! open mics with the aim of raising awareness and money for women‚s causes. Guidelines are included in the book and on the website (www.thattakesovaries.org)

This book is especially recommended for young women and girls, who might be surprised to find out that it was actually against the law to wear pants to school until the seventies, or inspired that a high schooler named Rachel organized 100 girls at her school against boys who were sexually harassing them. If the aim of the book is for "girls and women to be empowered by seeing what others do," go ahead and empower your little sister or niece or daughter, along with any older women you think could use a reminder of the courage ovaries can bring, with a copy of this energetic anthology.