Double bind : women on ambition / edited by Robin Romm.

Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction / Robin Romm -- Ebenezer laughs back: confessions of a workaholic / Pam Houston -- What came next / Theresa Rebeck -- On impractical urges / Ayana Mathis -- Girl with knife / Camas Davis -- Reply all / Robin Romm -- Nature and nurture / Marcia Chatelain -- Crying in the bathroom / Erika L. Sánchez -- Both / Yael Chatav Schonbrun -- No happy harmony / Elizabeth Corey -- Leaning in, leaning out / Allison Barrett Carter -- The price of black ambition / Roxane Gay -- Escape velocity / Claire Vaye Watkins -- Single lead / Blair Braverman -- The Chang girls / Lan Samantha Chang -- Goal your own way / Evany Thomas -- Astronauts / Nadia P. Manzoor -- The snarling girl: notes on ambition / Elisa Albert -- Ambitchin' / Julie Holland -- Original sin / Francine Prose -- Know your place / Molly Ringwald -- Ambition: the Cliffie notes / Joan Leegant -- Doubly denied / Christina Henríquez -- Becoming meta / Hawa Allan -- Letters to my mother and daughters on ambition / Sarah Ruhl.

Even as toweringly successful women from Gloria Steinem to Beyoncé embrace the word "feminism," the word "ambition," for many, remains loaded with ambivalence. Women who are naturally driven and goal-oriented shy away from it. They’re loath to see themselves―or be seen by others―as aggressive or, worst of all, as a bitch. Double Bind could not come at a more urgent time, a necessary collection that explodes this conflict, examining the concept of female ambition from every angle in essays full of insight, wisdom, humor, and rage. Perceptively identifying a paradox at the very heart of feminism, editor Robin Romm has marshaled a stunning constellation of thinkers to examine their relationships with ambition with candor, intimacy, and wit. Roxane Gay discusses how race informs and feeds her ambition. Theresa Rebeck takes on Hollywood and confronts her own unquenchable thirst to overcome its sexism. Francine Prose considers the origins of the stigma; Nadia Manzoor discusses its cultural weight. Women who work in fields long-dominated by men―from butchery to tech to dogsledding―weigh in on what it takes to crack that ever-present glass ceiling, and the sometimes unexpected costs of shattering it. The eternally complex questions of aspiration and identity can be made even more treacherous at the dawn of motherhood; Allison Barrett Carter attempts leaning in at home, while Sarah Ruhl tries to uphold her feminist vision within motherhood’s infinite daily compromises.