Drawing upon letters, autobiographies and novels, this book examines the strategies that various southern women writers in the USA have used to create their own "voice", their own unique expression of mind and selfhood. This book demonstrates that, despite the constraining and muting effects of the South's historically patriarchal society, the region has been graced by the remarkably strong presence of women storytellers, both black and white, who have asserted their determination to become themselves through creative acts of voicing. Within a chronological structure, the author examines the letters of the plantation mistress Catherine Hammond, the memoir of "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" by Harriet Jacobs, the autobiographical writings of Ellen Glasgow, Zora Neasle Hurston and Eudora Weity as well as their novels "Barren Ground", "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and "The Optimist's Daughter" and Alice Walker's "The Color Purple" and Lee Smith's "Fair and Tender Ladies".