In the wake of September 11th, Muslim women in the West found themselves more marginalized than ever by a panicked discourse that did little to promote a true understanding of Islam or the Islamic world. Here, in this ambitious volume that includes essays, poetry, fiction, memoir, plays, and artwork, Muslim women speak for themselves, revealing a complexity of experience and thought that escapes most Western portrayals. Islam is, as editor Fawzia Afzal-Khan puts it, only "one spoke in the wheel of our lives." In Shattering the Stereotypes, essays by such writers as Ayesha Jalal, the Pakistani-American historian and MacArthur fellow, poems by award-winning poets including Suheir Hammad and Nathalie Handal, Journalism from writers such as Barbara Nimri Aziz, and a selection of short fiction and plays that are not just ethnically but attitudinally diverse, together make a more rounded portrait of what it is to be a Muslim woman in the 21st century.