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Copyright © 2017 Becca Anderson.
Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.
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The Book of Awesome Women: Boundary Breakers, Freedom Fighters, Sheroes and Female Firsts
Library of Congress Cataloging
ISBN: (paperback) 978-1-63353-583-1, (ebook) 978-1-63353-584-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017909207
BISAC category code : HIS058000 HISTORY / Women
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Chapter Two Eco Awesome : Saving Mother Earth
Chapter Three Awesome Athletes : Leveling the Playing Field
Chapter Four She Blinded Them With Science: Breaking New Ground
Chapter Five Still She Rises : Awesome Women of Color
Chapter Six They Resisted. They Persisted. They Are Awesome
Chapter Seven Amazing Musicians and Muses: Taking Center Stage
Chapter Eight Awesome Artists: Creative Woman Power
The courage of women moves me. This power only women have turned out to be the prime mover of my life, and for me, it was the words of women which raised me up and inspired me to have the courage to be a writer. One of the moments I felt this kindling was when my mother took me to see Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, a pivotal and moving episode in my life that remains with me still. This nurtured and encouraged my own creativity. The work of this successful woman of color, who shared her message with audiences all over the country, and later, all around the world, became the foundation upon which my personal creativity was developed. As I read and studied and learned more, I came to discover that a former African slave was one of the first women to be published in Colonial America. What courage there! But, it is not just women of color who bucked the tide of society and kept striving for all of us who came after, it is every woman who worked, both in and out of the house. Every women who marched for the vote, who rode the buses for civil rights and dared to sit in any seat. Every woman who didn’t listen when she was told she couldn’t do math or fly a plane or be an astronaut or a scientist or an athlete. Thank goodness these women didn’t listen to anyone but themselves. They listened to their own hearts. They heard a call to greatness and listened. It is all of us, flowing like a river and rising like the tide – unstoppable. So many of these women made hard choices and took a bet on the future, more for us than for themselves. They were largely overlooked and ignored by historians. And this is why I love books like this that bring forth those women who bravely forged our future. Bravo to great women!
—Ntozake Shange, poet, novelist, performer, and playwright, who wrote the Broadway-produced and Obie Award-winning For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf
The Book of Awesome Women provokes a question I’ve asked myself dozens of times: Where was this treasure—house of a book when I went to school? From the first grade on, I sat at my desk, listlessly listening to the cliched tales of heroes from history, all of them—or so it seemed—male. Meanwhile, as I grew up in the Pacific Northwest of the fifties, many of the women profiled in this book were busy making history, making changes, making intellectual contributions, and making waves. Did I hear about any of them in school? In the media? On that shiny new world of communications called television? Rarely, if ever.
Would my life have been different if I’d had these daring examples to aspire to, to take courage from, to lean on as my own personal support group from history? Most definitely.
For instance, when my mother and father pushed me toward a particular college, I asked what they saw me doing with my education, and they said, “A nurse, perhaps. Or a teacher.” I turned angrily from their narrow vision and their well-meant path of higher education. It was decades before I saw the learning (as valid when enrolled in the university life as well as in more traditional institutions) would set me free, free to become whatever I set my mind to be.
Over the years, as I made my way as a writer and researcher, many of the sheroes in this book became my personal sheroes, too. The lives and deeds of women like Mary Leakey, Karen Silkwood, Margaret Mead, Rachel Carson, and Eleanor Roosevelt moved me deeply and helped me grow. As a thirtysomething college reporter, for instance, I got to write my first news story about Billie Jean King’s rout of Bobby Riggs—and in so doing, the sheer audacity of Billie