The stories in Her Wild American Self focus on Filipina Americans—recent immigrants or first generation—and explore what it is to be American and female. Each character struggles with careers, motherhood, sisterhood, and roles within family and society, including the stereotype of the subservient Asian American woman. Neither fully accepting nor rejecting their Eastern and Western traditions, the characters in this collection attempt to come to terms with their bicultural upbringing. Ranging from the title story about a teenager who comes of age and falls from grace all in one tumultuous season, to a story about an artist who finds her medium and leaves her lover, to a story such as the one about a forty-two year old who realizes she has succeeded in establishing herself as her own woman, Her Wild American Self contains a rich and engaging mosaic of stories about contemporary Filipina American women.