Happy March, and welcome to Women’s History Month! We are celebrating the extraordinary work of women authors with 14 titles that speak to the history and experiences of women everywhere.
Women and Literature
These titles explore how women have shaped literature and used reading as an act for their own advancement.
In Tasting and Testing Books, Amy L. Blair explores the influence of Good Housekeeping’s reading advice column, “Tasting and Testing Books,” written by Emily Newell Blair between 1926 and 1934 on the reading lives of too-commonly overlooked women, often living outside of urban centers and away from elite literary circles.
If you’re interested in learning more about literature in women’s history, Closely and Consciously by Yung-Hsing Wu examines the importance of reading—personal, professional, vocational, aesthetic, and political during the women’s liberation movement in the United States. With a mix of close readings and archival research, Wu unpacks and interprets this central act of reading and why it matters during a crucial moment of feminist history.
Similarly, Christine Pawley traces the expansion of print-centered organizations and the histories of middle-class women—rural and urban, white and Black, married and unmarried—who used public and private institutions of print to tell their stories, expand their horizons, and further their ambitions in her book Organizing Women. Drawing from a diverse range of examples, Christine Pawley introduces readers to women who ran branch libraries and library schools in Chicago and Madison, built radio empires from their midwestern farms, formed reading clubs, and published newsletters.
Women’s History
For readers interested in learning more about women’s history, The Virtuous and Violent Women of Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts offers a revealing look at acts of violence by Anglo-American women in colonial Massachusetts. Emily C. K. Romeo shows that the situations in which women chose to defy powerful social conventions and resort to overt violence expose the underlying priorities and gendered expectations that shaped this society.
In Our Science, Ourselves, Christa Kuljian tells the origin story of feminist science studies by focusing on the life histories of six key figures—Ruth Hubbard, Rita Arditti, Evelyn Fox Keller, Evelynn Hammonds, Anne Fausto-Sterling, and Banu Subramaniam. Kuljian chronicles and celebrates the contributions that these women have made to our collective scientific knowledge and view of the world. Beverly Smith, Black feminist advocate says, “Our Science, Ourselves is a fascinating story of women developing new ways of seeing and doing science. It’s also a wonderful account of how scholars and activists, scientists and artists, Black women and white women worked together to bring about change in the world.”
Women’s Stories
These titles share the stories and experiences of women through memoir, nonfiction and creative nonfiction storytelling.
Cynthia Blakeley’s memoir, The Innermost House, details her upbringing in Cape Cod, Massachusetts surrounded by generations of immediate and extended family and isolated by the mysteries locked inside her affectionate yet elusive mother and short-fused father. Blakeley contends that making sense of ourselves is a collaborative affair, one that begins with understanding those we came from.
A Juniper Prize winner for Creative Nonfiction, Because We Must explores the journey of Tracy Youngblom and her son Elias as he recovers from a car accident that claims his sight. In this riveting memoir, Youngblom traverses her family’s lives before and after the accident, capturing the complications of grief, recovery, and the strength it takes to move forward—because we must. Helen Fremont, author of The Escape Artist and After Long Silence says “Because We Must is a riveting and heart-rending account of resilience in the face of unthinkable loss. Tracy Youngblom has created a masterpiece of fierce honesty and remarkable restraint, leaving the reader in awe of her wisdom and artistry.”
Mothering in the Time of Coronavirus offers a look at the broader social consequences of COVID-19 that left mothers disproportionately facing the extra child rearing responsibilities of a world in quarantine. Focusing on both remote and essential workers in central New York, Amy Lutz, Sujung (Crystal) Lee, and Baurzhan Bokayev argue that the pandemic transformed an already intensive style of contemporary American child rearing into extremely intensive mothering. Mothering in the Time of Coronavirus explores how mothers juggled working, supervising at-home learning, and protecting their children’s emotional and physical health during the outbreak.
When Will the Joy Come? Black Women in the Ivory Tower examines the journeys of over thirty Black women at various stages of their careers to better understand how Black women academics have found joy in the midst of adversity. Robin Phylisia Chapdelaine, Abena Ampofoa Asare and Michelle Dionne Thompson bring together honest and vital essays that ponder how Black women balance fatigue and frustrations and explore where, when, and if joy enters their lives.
S. L. Wisenberg’s The Wandering Womb follows her search across the expanse of continents and through history books and family records for home and meaning as a fourth-generation Jewish Texan. With wit, verve, blood, scars, and a solid dose of self-deprecation, this Juniper prize winner for creative nonfiction explores the themes of identity and womanhood with humor and relatability.
Fiction and Poetry
If you’re interested in reading fiction and poetry written by women about their experiences
Chamber after Chamber is a Juniper Prize–winning poetry book about what fractures, fixes, and refills the hearts of two girls as they grow into women. Saara Raappana’s poems follow a speaker and her cousin through their hardscrabble, backwoods childhood to their separation—both physical and emotional—as adults.
In a collection of 12 stories, Sarah Wallman shows women attempting to build durable havens from reality, struggling to keep relationships intact, and reinventing themselves in her book, Senseless Women. Some of these women are senseless because they refuse to feel, others because they’ve been deprived of stimuli and attention. As these twelve stories prove, there’s no sensible way to fall in love, raise children, or escape. Kirkus Reviews says, “Being a woman is no walk in the park in this debut collection of intricately plotted, sometimes fabulist stories . . . [This is] imaginative work that shows how much women deserve better plots.”
A new title at UMass Press and a Juniper Prize winner for Fiction, Gichigami follows the story of Marta and the disappearance and sudden reappearance of her mother. Lindsey Steffes’ eerie coming-of-age novel explores the lives of women and girls of the Midwest and shines a light on the struggles of absent mothers, runaway daughters, and those who yearn for more than life has offered them through a tale of loss, longing, and betrayal. Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Jane Smiley says, “Steffes captures the mystery and beauty of the area with rare artistry. She also writes a compelling story—the plot is suspenseful, but more than that, the characters, with their idiosyncrasies and their faults, bring the plot alive.”
The Long Swim, a Juniper Prize–winning story collection, explores the themes of womanhood and humanity through cynical, irreverent and formally daring storytelling. Terese Svoboda’s characters strive for escape—through romance, travel, or more self-destructive pursuits—and collide with the constraints of family and home, their longing for freedom and autonomy often at odds with the desire for safety and harmony.
