Book excerpt: The book Us & Them: Women Writers’ Discourses on Foreignness analyses the contingent nature of the constructions of foreignness in Ireland and Galicia. On the basis of various comparable circumstances in both communities —migration flows, increasingly multicultural societies, constant renegotiations of national identity, and the growing visibility of women in the public sphere— this book traces the multiple ways in which gender is intertwined with foreignness. Focusing on literary works published since the 1980s the author presents contemporary women writers’ new insights into cultural difference.