Out of the women's movement has come a body of women's literature that is different in several ways from that produced prior to it. First, there is simply more of it being written, published, and read. Second, it is becoming more honest. One of the most striking features of women's literature in the last twenty years is its directness and honesty in its attempts to dispel those male-perpetuated images of women. The process has been painful and gradual and, of course, did not start with the women's movement. But feminism has been behind the growing strength and truth in women's literary voices.

However, the voices are not uniform, as is becoming more evident in recent years. Black women, poor women, third-world women, and lesbians have experienced racism and discrimination within the mainstream of feminism, thus their literature has had to strive even harder to tell the truth of their lives, and have it heard. The women's movement has spawned a new and exciting body of women's literature, but it has yet to, in the words of Audre Lorde, “reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside ... and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there.”