Freud asked what women want, and some decades later the Rolling Stones opined that while you can’t always get what you want, it is sometimes possible to get what you need. The stories in How She Knows What She Knows About Yo-Yos spin multiple variations on the themes of wants and needs, as played out in the lives of five very different women. The protagonists in these stories differ in age, cultural background, and marital status, and they live in far-flung locations. But they share the problem of defining just what it is that they want and need—which is to say, of course, the problem of defining themselves. Through telling observations, flashes of humor, keen insight, and compassion, author Mary Ann Taylor-Hall draws us into their stories ... and into their hearts.

Watch the program [requires RealPlayer®].

Stories in this collection

Card catalog entry from the Library of Congress

Publisher: Sarabande Books, Louisville

Amazon.com information page

Barnes and Noble information page

So how much do you know about yo-yos?
How do yo-yos work?, from Ask Experts, explains the physics.
Cosmic Yo-Yos, which bills itself as the “launch pad to the yo-yo universe,” illustrates how to do various tricks and offers a wealth of links.

Mary Ann Taylor-Hall

About the author from the book endpapers

Chat with Mary Ann Taylor-Hall and writing students at Asbury College, from Sarabande Books’s Sarabande in Education program

One Main Sound, a story published in Ploughshares, became a chapter in Taylor-Hall’s novel Come and Go, Molly Snow—the August 1999 bookclub selection.

The Halls of Poetry, an item from the January 6, 2003 Paris E-Letter, noted a visit to the Paris Poetry Workshop by Mary Ann and her husband, James Baker Hall, then Kentucky Poet Laureate (scroll down about 2/3 of the way).

Peachy, a poem by Mary Ann Taylor-Hall (Ace Weekly, June 14, 2001)