2013 Reading Challenge - Women's America



Image by Horian Varlan

Last year, my reading goal was a book a week. Fifty two books. I devoured fifty. For 2013, I wanted more focus. I’ve always been a history buff.  Howard Zinn’s A People’sHistory of the United States tells American history from the perspective of the conquered and un-empowered – women, slaves, Native Americans, poor, non-white. His book spans from Columbus  to the 2000 election.

Some of the un-empowered have gained power, but for the bulk of America’s short history the voices recorded and revered have been white men. There have been some great white men worth revering, but I’m interested in the quieter voices and in particular the voices of women.

In America, women have often had a voice, but not always with a microphone. I want to re-learn American history through the eyes of women. Now granted these were the women whose voices were loud enough to be mentioned in history. Their lives may not represent the reality of women who didn’t make the news, but it’s a start.

Friends recommended over seventy women who made American history (gotta love the speed of social media). I’ve selected twenty to read – the biographies span from 1591 to present day.  I’d love for you to join me. Books are always better when discussed.

The list:

• A Mythic Life: Learning to Live our Greater Story by Jean Houston
• The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
• America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines by Gail Collins
• Women in the Modern B7: Their Education and Their Dilemmas by Mirra Komarovsky
• Eleanor Lansing Dulles, Chances of a Lifetime: A Memoir
• I Married Adventure: The Lives of Martin and Osa Johnson
• Esther Ross, Stillaguamish Champion
• Nellie Bly's Book Around the World in Seventy-Two Days
• Carry A. Nation: Retelling the Life (Religion in North America) by Fran Grace
• Woman's Voice, Woman's Place: Lucy Stone and the Birth of the Woman's Rights Movement by Joelle Million
• Bird Woman: Sacagawea's Own Story by James Willard Schultz
• Sacagawea Speaks: Beyond the Shining Mountains with Lewis and Clark by Joyce Badgley Hunsaker
• The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers by Henry Louis Gates Jr
• Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft by Paul Boyer (Abigail Williams)
• Women of the Constitution: Wives of the Signers by Janice E. McKenney
• The Strong Witch Society: The Diary of Mary Bliss Parsons by DH Parsons
• Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson by Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
• Four Women in a Violent Time: Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643), Mary Dyer (1591?-1660), Lady Deborah Moody (1600-1659), Penelope Stout (1622-1732)by Deborah Crawford
• American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans by Eve LaPlante
• Manual for the Peacemaker: An Iroquois Legend to Heal Self and Society by Jean Rebecca Houston