ICYMI Women's History Month 2021
ICYMI, we've been highlighting women of past and present as well as posting interesting resources to explore in celebration of Women's History Month (WHM). If you missed any posts, you can find them here.
Left to right: Joy Harjo, Ai-jen Poo, Sandra Cisneros
💠Joy Harjo (b. 1951) is a poet, musician, playwright, and author. She is the current United States Poet Laureate and member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Harjo draws on First Nation storytelling and histories, as well as feminist and social justice poetic traditions, and frequently incorporates indigenous myths, symbols, and values into her writing. Harjo is also a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, holds a Tulsa Artist Fellowship, directs For Girls Becoming, an arts mentorship program for young Mvskoke women, and is a founding board member and Chair of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.
Place a request on one of her works: An American Sunrise: Poems and Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings : Poems
💠Ai-jen Poo (b. 1974) is the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, an organization working to bring quality work, dignity and fairness to the growing numbers of workers who care and clean in our homes, the majority of whom are immigrants and women of color. Under her leadership, domestic workers won eight state Domestic Workers Bill of Rights and federal overtime and minimum wage protections for more than two million home care workers. She is also co-director of Caring Across Generations. Her book, The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America, helps Americans make sense of the need and opportunity in the elder boom: to improve access to care for all families while ensuring a strong care workforce for the future. Her book is available with your library card on Overdrive or the Libby app.
💠Sandra Cisneros (b. 1954) is a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, performer, and artist whose work explores the lives of the working-class. Her classic, coming-of-age novel, The House on Mango Street, won an American Book Award, has sold over six million copies, has been translated into over twenty languages, and is required reading in elementary, high school, and universities across the nation. On September 22, 2016, President Barack Obama presented Cisneros with the National Medal of Arts for her work.
Place a request on one of her works: La Casa en Mango Street, The House on Mango Street, or Loose Woman: Poems.
Left to Right: Janet Mock, Elizabeth Blackwell, Emily Blackwell
💠Janet Mock (b. 1983) is a bestselling author, writer, director, and advocate. In 2019, Mock signed a historic three-year, multimillion-dollar contract with Netflix, making her the first trans person to sign a production pact with a major studio. She is a writer, director, and producer on FX’s Pose and Netflix’s Hollywood. Mock is the author of two bestselling memoirs: Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More and Surpassing Certainty : What My Twenties Taught Me.
💠Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) and Emily Blackwell (1826-1910): In the mid-19th century, it was an unheard of notion for a woman to study medicine, but in 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in America to receive an M.D. She was soon joined by her younger sister, Emily, and together, the Blackwells founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, the first hospital staffed entirely by women. Janice P. Nimura’s The Doctors Blackwell presents the story of these pioneering sisters and how they exploded the limits of possibility for women in medicine (US National Archives).
Book Recs from your librarian!
Check out our fiction and non-fiction book lists with fantastic titles by and about women.
Feel free to ask staff for further recommendations by calling (760) 564-4767.
Left to Right: Roza Mojsovska, Zitkála-Šá, Marley Dias
💠Roza Mojsovska: It was International Women’s Day and all the children were making greeting cards at a hospital in North Macedonia. Seven year old Roza Mojsovska , just having had surgery on her hands and knowing that she wouldn’t be able to pick up anything with them, picked up a crayon and drew a flower with her mouth instead. Since then, she has never stopped painting and has won numerous awards for her artwork. She has also published several poetry books! She has overcome many barriers in her life and continues to inspire people through her art and poetry.
💠Zitkála-Šá (Red Bird / Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) (1876–1938) was a composer, teacher, author, and Indigenous Rights activist. Born on the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota, she left her community at age 8 to attend a missionary-run boarding school as part of a U.S. government policy to educate American Indian youth with the philosophy: “Kill the Indian, and save the man.” In her writings, she described the anguish of the boarding school's attempts to erase tribal identity and American Indian struggles to resist assimilation into European American culture.
Zitkála-Šá was a trained violinist and in 1913, co-composed and wrote the libretto for the first American Indian opera, The Sun Dance Opera. Zitkála-Šá became increasingly involved in the struggle for American Indian rights, lobbying for U.S. citizenship, voting, and sovereignty rights. In 1926, she co-founded the National Council of American Indians to lobby for increased political power for American Indians, and the preservation of American Indian heritage and traditions (pbs.org).
💠In 2015 at the age of 11, writer and activist Marley Dias (b. 2005) founded #1000BlackGirlBooks, a campaign to collect and donate children's books that feature Black girls as protagonists. The campaign has collected over 10,000 books since then and has inspired the creation of a #1000BlackGirlBooks Resource Guide to help locate books by reading level, title, and author.
Marley has spoken at the White House’s United State of Women alongside Michelle Obama and Oprah, The Forbes Women’s Summit, United Nations’ Girl Up, and several others. In 2018, she was recognized as one of TIME's 25 most influential teens. Read: Marley Dias gets it done : and so can you!
Left to Right: Georgia O'Keeffe, Sarah McBride, Maria Tallchief
💠Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) was an American painter who is considered the “Mother of American Modernism” and one of the most significant artists of the 20th Century. She is best known for her paintings of southwestern landscapes, flowers, and animal skulls. When O’Keeffe began to lose her eyesight later in life, her desire to create never faltered. With help from assistants, she kept making art and wrote a bestselling book. "I can see what I want to paint," she said at the age of 90. "The thing that makes you want to create is still there."
Learn more about Georgia O'Keeffe: Full bloom : the art and life of Georgia O'Keeffe, Little People, Big Dreams: Georgia O'Keeffe, Georgia : a novel of Georgia O'Keefe.
💠Sarah McBride (b. 1990) is a member of the Delaware State Senate and the first transgender senator in U.S. history. In 2013, she advocated for Delaware’s landmark non-discrimination legislation which was signed into law that year. McBride is a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization and in 2016 she made history when she spoke at the Democratic National Convention. In 2018, Sarah published her memoir Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality, which recounts her experiences fighting for equality in Delaware and her relationship with her late husband.
💠Maria Tallchief (1925-2013) was considered one of the greatest American ballerinas of her time. She was the first Native American (Osage Tribe) woman to break into ballet, the first prima ballerina of the New York City Ballet (a position she held for 13 years), and the first American to dance with the Paris Opera Ballet. After her retirement as a ballerina, she founded and became artistic director of the Chicago City Ballet. She was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors (1996), inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame (1996), and awarded the National Medal of Arts (1999).
Learn more about Maria Tallchief: Tallchief : America's prima ballerina, Who Was Maria Tallchief?, She persisted : 13 American women who changed the world.
Left: Suzan-Lori Parks, Right: Pauli Murray
💠Because of her poor spelling, a high school teacher discouraged Suzan-Lori Parks (b. 1963) from writing so she turned her focus to science. She rediscovered her love for poetry and prose during her undergraduate studies and changed her major from chemistry to English and German literature. She studied fiction-writing under writer James Baldwin and with his encouragement, started writing plays. She is one of the most successful playwrights in the United States and she became the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002 for her play Topdog/Underdog.
Place a request on her novel, Getting Mother's Body: A Novel
💠Pauli Murray (1910-1985) was a writer, poet, activist, organizer, and priest who fought for the rights of women, people of color, and civil rights. While attending Howard University, Murray proposed challenging the "separate" part of the Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling as a violation of the 13th and 14th Amendments. This challenge became the basis for the Brown vs. Board of Education case. Murray was a co-founder of the National Organization of Women (NOW), but feeling that NOW sidelined women of color, joined the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) instead. Murray was also the first African American woman in the United States to become an Episcopal priest. Murray's childhood home is designated as a National Historic Landmark. (womenshistory.org)
Learn more about Pauli Murray: Jane Crow : The Life of Pauli Murray, The Firebrand and the First Lady : Portrait of a Friendship : Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice.
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Happy reading!
About Women's History Month:
WHM is a celebration of women’s contributions to history, culture and society and has been observed annually in the month of March in the United States since 1987. Find even more info, exhibits, collections, audio/video resources here: https://womenshistorymonth.gov/
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