This year marks the 90th anniversary of American women winning the right to vote and the 30th anniversary of the first National Women’s History Project. To honor these accomplishments, the 2010 national theme for Women’s History Month is: Writing Women Back into History.
To celebrate this theme, members of the South Haven Branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) have written recommendations for some of their favorite books. These titles include both fiction and nonfiction, and are all written by women, with the exception of one that is co-authored with the woman’s husband.
MEMOIR
She Got Up Off the Couch and Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel. Recommended by Ann Habicht.
A memoir and sequel to A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana, this book tells the story of the author’s mother, Delonda, who for decades sat on the sofa, ate, read, and watched TV. Then she abruptly breaks away, attends college, earns a master’s degree and loses over a hundred pounds. This is a true story about a woman who reclaims her life against a mountain of odds. Funny, inspiring, and beautifully written, it resonates with humor, truth, and pathos.
Stealing Buddha’s Dinner: A Memoir by Bich Minh Nguyen. Recommended by Kathy Straits.
Nguyen’s memoir is about her childhood growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan as a Vietnam refugee in the early 1980s. She shares intimate family memories and captures the experience of two cultures with their clashing smells, religions, hairstyles, clothes, habits, and especially, food. Her typical and not so typical childhood experiences give her story a universal flavor. For those of you who grew up in Grand Rapids, many of the neighborhoods will be familiar and bring back your own memories.
A must read about a unique vision of the immigrant experience and a lyrical ode to how identity is often shaped by the things we long for. This book was selected for The Great Michigan Read for 2010 and is the recipient of the PEN/Jerard Fund Award.
The Class Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls.
Recommended by Lynn Cheeseman.
Can you imagine a 3-year-old girl cooking? Yes, cooking her own meals! In this family, it was often the only way the children were fed.
Jeannette Walls has written an amazing memoir revealing a family both deeply troubled and dysfunctional, yet loving and caring. Her parents were perhaps mentally unbalanced (some would say crazy) and defiantly oddball to the extreme. The children were allowed great freedom but were bound to their mother by the need to care for her in her black periods that came too often in her life as an artist. Their father, ever the schemer and dreamer with wild money making ideas, was often absent when he drank, but his powerful will and love for his family controlled all of them even when he was not around.
Jeannette and her siblings eventually left their parents in order to remain sane and survive. But they remained connected by love and by the power of their parents’ intellect and creative energy. These bonds continue even after the father’s death and the mother’s choice to be homeless. Both funny and sad, horrifying and hilarious, this book is a testament to resilience and fortitude and great writing.
An American Childhood by Annie Dillard.
Recommended by Phyllis Rodenhouse.
This memoir by Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Dillard gracefully weaves portraits of her parents and two sisters with their quirks of human nature into the diversity of life around her. The past and present of her community are also part of her life story. Dillard captures my enthusiasm with her imaginative use of words and phrases and I highly recommend her memoir to anyone seeking to write their own life story.
INFORMATIONAL NONFICTION
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Recommended by Toni Carroll.
These sensationally interesting stories about an extraordinary array of women struggling under profoundly dire circumstances are told through exquisitely crafted prose. Fiercely moral, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen. Through their stories, this husband
and wife team help us see that the key to progress in our world lies in unleashing women’s potential---and they make clear how each of us can help make that happen.
When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins. Recommended by Elaine Stephens.
Remember when women had to get their husbands’ permission to apply for a credit card? When a judge could send a woman home to change from slacks into “more appropriate clothes”? When there were quotas based on gender that limited the number of woman admitted into medical and law schools? Do you know that it was only 28 years ago when the ban was lifted allowing women to run in the Boston Marathon?
Collins combines public events with the personal memories of ordinary women to tell the dynamic story of profound changes in every aspect of American women’s lives during the past five decades. With wit and candor, she includes little known stories such as how Congress in the early 1970s exempted itself from the antidiscrimination laws that were passed for the rest of the nation. You’ll both laugh and weep as you reflect upon progress made and progress deferred in the struggle for equal rights and full acceptance. Regardless of your age or gender, this engaging book is an excellent read and a great choice for book clubs or a circle of close friends.
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich.
Recommended by Elizabeth Miller.
Here we have a woman with a Ph.D. in Sociology, not just bemoaning the fate and the lives of the overworked, underemployed legions of women in our country, but showing us, by doing their work, what is asked of them. In this book, Ehrenreich sets out to demonstrate the reality of their lives. She sheds all her own personal comforts and spends months working at a Wal-Mart, at a cleaning service, and other low-paying, no benefit, HARD physical jobs.
It is an eye-opener for those who see poverty as a far-away problem from which those involved could emerge if they just tried harder. Barbara describes and documents the realities of those who truly want to be responsible for themselves, who do NOT want false pity or pats on the head, but who cannot break through the barriers of working for less pay than they live on, who neglect their own children so that the children of others can be cared for, and who live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and clean. Her expose is both painful and true.
ESSAY & POETRY
Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou. Recommended by Toni Carroll.
Read this slim volume of essays before you give it to your daughter (or granddaughter) to enjoy! Written by the 80 year old Angelou who never had a daughter, this odd little collection of 28 short essays (and a few poems) on life, faith, motherhood, kindness, and what it means to be human warms the soul. Charming plain talk about living life with meaning provides sound advice, vivid memory and strong opinion and imparts lessons in compassion and fortitude.
BIOGRAPHY
The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America’s Greatest Female Spy by Judith Pearson. Recommended by Barbara Konrad.
Virginia Hall was a woman of uncommon courage who used her language and leadership skills to assist the French underground during WW II. Author Judy Pearson brings her alive in this fascinating biography. I often felt I was hearing Virginia tell her own story. My understanding of life for the French people during the war grew as I followed her work as a radio operator and leader of underground organizations.
Virginia’s physical strength also impressed me as she accomplished all this with a serious handicap, a wooden leg required following an amputation after a hunting accident. Virginia Hall was a private person who didn’t seek publicity for her many accomplishments, but I’m very glad this author gave a voice to a courageous young woman whose main goal was to help her country.
Wild Rose: The True Story of a Civil War Spy by Ann Blackman.
Recommended by Judy Pearson.
For shear bravado, no woman in either the North or the South rivaled the courage of Civil War spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow. A sparkling Washington hostess, legendary beauty and lover, and Confederate spy, Rose risked everything for the cause she valued more than life itself. In this superb portrait, Ann Blackman tells the surprising true story of this truly unique and courageous woman.
Women in Mathematics by Lynn Osen. Recommended by Toni Carroll.
The colorful lives of these women, who often traveled in the most avant-garde circles of their day, are presented in fascinating detail. The obstacles and censures that were also a part of their lives are a sobering reminder of the bias against women still present in this and other fields of academic endeavor. Mathematicians, science historians, and general readers will find this book a lively history; women will find it a reminder of a proud tradition and a challenge to take their rightful place in academic life today.
FICTION
Gate to Women’s Country by Sherri Tepper. Recommended by Toni Carroll.
If science fiction, anti-war, or ecotopian literature appeals to you, you will love this post-apocalyptic novel that explores the causes of human violence. This well-written story follows Stavia from an inquisitive 10-year-old to maturity as doctor, mother, and member of the Marthatown Women’s Council. Human civilization has evolved into a dual society where walls enclose the peaceful women and keep the warrior men out. By the last chapter of this masterful tale the initial chasm between the two sexes is being slowly whittled away to the mutual benefit of both.
Mysteries by Author Sara Paretsky Recommended by Elizabeth Miller.
Does a strong, dynamic woman writing about a strong, dynamic female private investigator sound like your ideal choice to read? Then you are urged to try one of Sara Paretsky’s many great novels. Sara’s alter ego, V.I. Warshawski, shows us the good, the bad, and the ugly of Chicago. V.I. is dogged in her investigations as well as her understanding of those she investigates.
You’ll meet a girl’s basketball team from the projects who have almost no equipment yet who are vital in the story. You’ll meet V.I.’s dogs, shared with her funny, overly protective neighbor. As you meet her friends---a very mixed lot—you will come to understand some of the reasons for her prickly, intelligent, and effective methods of solving crimes. Sara’s books have intrigue, clever plots, and very believable characters. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which woman is better: Sara for her taut, beautifully paced writing or V.I. for her ability to apply her wits and perseverance to solve crimes others would ignore.
The Calligrapher’s Daughter: A Novel by Eugenia Kim. Recommended by Elaine Fluck
Korea in the first years of the 20th century as described in this novel would be unrecognizable to visitors today. For a daughter of the educated upper class with connections to the royal family, the future promised an arranged marriage, where life was ruled by the dictates of fathers, brothers and husbands, even in Presbyterian families such as Najin’s. Everything changed with the Japanese occupation, but not for the better. Forced to adopt Japanese rules, customs and language, with their homes and incomes taken, many Koreans did everything possible to leave their homeland.
Najin is finally permitted by her father to marry the man of her choice and with plans to leave for college in America; life begins to look better---but only for one day. The day after their marriage, Nan-Jin’ husband is allowed to leave the country but her exit visa is denied. Her struggle to survive and to help her increasingly impoverished parents cope with life in pre-Communist Korea provides the plot for this fact-based novel based on the life of the author’s mother.