6 Women's History Month Reads

It’s March, which means it’s Women's History Month! At its core, Women's History Month is about highlighting the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society. This year's theme is a continuation of 2020's: "Valiant Women of the Vote: Refusing to Be Silenced." As an example, we can look to civil rights activists of the past like Ida B. Wells, Ella Baker, and Shirley Chisholm, who championed voting rights for women and Black people. Therefore, in the spirit of Women's History Month, I will be highlighting six particular books by and about women who have pushed boundaries, affected change, redefined roles, and changed our understanding of what it means to be truly powerful.

1) The Island of Happiness: Tales of Madame d'Aulnoy by Natalie Frank

Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville (1650–1705), also known as Madame D’Aulnoy, was a pioneer of the French literary fairy tale. Though D’Aulnoy work now rarely appears outside of anthologies, her books were notably popular during her lifetime, and she was in fact the author who coined the term “fairy tales” (contes des fées). Presenting eight of D’Aulnoy magical stories, The Island of Happiness juxtaposes poetic English translations with a wealth of original, contemporary drawings by Natalie Frank, one of today’s most outstanding visual artists. In this beautiful volume, classic narratives are interpreted and made anew through Frank’s feminist and surreal images.

This feast of words and visuals presents worlds where women exercise their independence and push against rigid social rules. Fidelity and sincerity are valued over jealousy and greed, though not everything ends seamlessly. Selected tales include “Belle-Belle,” where an incompetent king has his kingdom restored to him through an androgynous heroine’s constancy. In “The Green Serpent,” a heroine falls in love with the eponymous snake, is punished by a wicked fairy, and endures trials to prove her worthiness. And in “The White Cat,” a young prince is dazzled by the astonishing powers of a feline. Jack Zipes' informative introduction offers historical context, and Natalie Frank’s opening essay delves into her aesthetic approaches to d’Aulnoy characters.

An inspired integration of art and text, The Island of Happiness is filled with seductive stories of transformation and enchantment.

2) Accidental Feminism: Gender Parity and Selective Mobility among India’s Professional Elite by Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen

In India, elite law firms offer a surprising oasis for women within a hostile, predominantly male industry. Less than 10 percent of the country’s lawyers are female, but women in the most prestigious firms are significantly represented both at entry and partnership. Elite workspaces are notorious for being unfriendly to new actors, so what allows for aberration in certain workspaces? Drawing from observations and interviews with more than 130 elite professionals, Accidental Feminism examines how a range of underlying mechanisms—gendered socialization and essentialism, family structures and dynamics, and firm and regulatory histories—afford certain professionals egalitarian outcomes that are not available to their local and global peers.

3) For the Many: American Feminists and the Global Fight for Democratic Equality by Dorothy Sue Cobble

For the Many presents an inspiring look at how US women and their global allies pushed the nation and the world toward justice and greater equality for all. Reclaiming social democracy as one of the central threads of American feminism, Dorothy Sue Cobble offers a bold rewriting of twentieth-century feminist history and documents how forces, peoples, and ideas worldwide shaped American politics. Cobble follows egalitarian women’s activism from the explosion of democracy movements before World War I to the establishment of the New Deal, through the upheavals in rights and social citizenship at midcentury, to the reassertion of conservatism and the revival of female-led movements today.

4) The Rebellion of the Daughters: Jewish Women Runaways in Habsburg Galicia by Rachel Manekin

The Rebellion of the Daughters investigates the flight of young Jewish women from their Orthodox, mostly Hasidic, homes in Western Galicia (now Poland) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In extreme cases, hundreds of these women sought refuge in a Kraków convent, where many converted to Catholicism. Those who stayed home often remained Jewish in name only. Relying on a wealth of archival documents, including court testimonies, letters, diaries, and press reports, Rachel Manekin reconstructs the stories of three Jewish women runaways and reveals their struggles and innermost convictions.

5) Nathalie Sarraute: A Life Between by Ann Jefferson

A leading exponent of the nouveau roman, Nathalie Sarraute (1900–1999) was also one of France’s most cosmopolitan literary figures, and her life was bound up with the intellectual and political ferment of twentieth-century Europe. Ann Jefferson’s Nathalie Sarraute: A Life Between is the authoritative biography of this major writer. Nathalie Sarraute was known primarily in connection with the nouveau roman of the 1960s and 1970s, and latterly as the author of Childhood, an autobiography which was later dramatised on Broadway. Her biography is known as the first proper and thorough biography of an important figure in late twentieth-century French literature. In all, this book was very well written and informative.

6) The Tolls of Uncertainty: How Privilege and the Guilt Gap Shape Unemployment in America by Sarah Damaske

Through the intimate stories of those seeking work, The Tolls of Uncertainty offers a startling look at the nation’s unemployment system—who it helps, who it hurts, and what, if anything, we can do to make it fair. Drawing on interviews with one hundred men and women who have lost jobs across Pennsylvania, Sarah Damaske examines the ways unemployment shapes families, finances, health, and the job hunt. Damaske demonstrates that commonly held views of unemployment are either incomplete or just plain wrong. Shaped by a person’s gender and class, unemployment generates new inequalities that cast uncertainties on the search for work and on life chances beyond the world of work, threatening opportunity in America.