Herstory is women's history: are popular books by and about women prowomen?

This paper looks at 42 ‘family saga’ novels written by and for women so as to interrogate issues raised in their content using the prism of feminist-postmodernist critical theories. It explores how such an approach calls for understanding that narrative is data and for accepting storytelling as applicable to academic frameworks as well as other forms of knowledge. This works towards understanding how this genre enables women’s understanding of women’s issues; brings historical aspects of women’s lives into the contemporary domain so as to establish ‘herstorical’ practices and perspectives; and identifies the research-based elements of these novels so as to illuminate the backgrounds to the stories as providing further elements of ‘fictional truth’.