Each chapter introduces the reader to the work of one or more playwrights, covering significant writers such as Rachel Crothers, Susan Glaspell, Lillian Hellman, Sophie Treadwell, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, Megan Terry, Ntozake Shange, Adrienne Kennedy, Wendy Wasserstein, Marsha Norman, Beth Henley and Maria Irene Fornes, in the context of topics such as early comedy and melodrama, feminism and realism, the Harlem Renaissance and feminism.