Women’s History Month, a month for commemorating and encouraging the study and celebration of the vital role of women in history and contemporary society. Here is a list of non-fiction book recommendations that you can check out from the library highlighting some of women’s many enduring contributions and achievements.
Maya Angelou – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age–and must live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.
Ellen Carol DuBois – Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote
Honoring the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment to the Constitution, this exciting history explores the full scope of the movement to win the vote for women through portraits of its bold leaders and devoted activists. Distinguished historian Ellen Carol DuBois begins in the pre-Civil War years and shows how suffrage leaders persevered through the Jim Crow years into the reform era of Progressivism. DuBois follows women’s efforts to use their voting rights to win political office, increase their voting strength, and pass laws banning child labor, ensuring maternal health, and securing greater equality for women.
Gloria Steinem – My Life on the Road
A writer, activist, organizer and inspiring leader Gloria Steinem was a leading voice in the second-wave feminist movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. My Life on the Road is the moving, funny, and profound story of Gloria’s growth and the growth of a revolutionary movement for equality–and the story of how surprising encounters on the road shaped both. From her first experience of social activism among women in India to her work as a journalist in the 1960s; from the whirlwind of political campaigns to the founding of Ms. magazine; from the historic 1977 National Women’s Conference to her travels through Indian Country–a lifetime spent on the road allowed Gloria to listen and connect deeply with people, to understand that context is everything, and to become part of a movement that would change the world.
Rachel Swaby – Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science – and the World
Covering Nobel Prize winners and major innovators, as well as lesser known but hugely significant scientists who influence our every day, Rachel Swaby’s vibrant profiles span centuries of courageous thinkers and illustrate how each one’s ideas developed from their first moment of scientific engagement through the research and discovery for which they’re best known. This fascinating tour reveals 52 women at their best-while encouraging and inspiring a new generation of girls to put on their lab coats.
Rebecca Traister – Good and Mad
From Rebecca Traister, the New York Times bestselling author of All the Single Ladies comes a vital, incisive exploration into the transformative power of female anger and its ability to transcend into a political movement. The story of female fury and its cultural significance demonstrates the long history of bitter resentment that has enshrouded women’s slow rise to political power in America, as well as the ways that anger is received when it comes from women as opposed to when it comes from men. With eloquence and fervor, Rebecca tracks the history of female anger as political fuel–from suffragettes marching on the White House to office workers vacating their buildings after Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Here Traister explores women’s anger at both men and other women; anger between ideological allies and foes; the varied ways anger is perceived based on its owner; as well as the history of caricaturing and delegitimizing female anger; and the way women’s collective fury has become transformative political fuel–as is most certainly occurring today.
Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own
In this extraordinary essay, Virginia Woolf examines the limitations of womanhood in the early twentieth century. With the startling prose and poetic license of a novelist, she makes a bid for freedom, emphasizing that the lack of an independent income, and the titular ‘room of one’s own’, prevents most women from reaching their full literary potential.
The more we hear women’s stories, the more apparent it becomes that every woman has achievements that inspire, experiences that can help lift others, and the ability to shine a light on the fact we still have work to do to change the bias that women face every day.
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