Reading List: Women’s History Month

As part of our calendar celebrating national heritage months and observances, explore these selected works that speak to women’s history.

Artwork by Shivangi Ladha, self-portrait of a woman in different stages of reclining and sitting upright

Shivangi Ladha, Self Portrait, 2017. Screenprint with masking tape. Courtesy of the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College.

Poetry

These Poems by Raisa Tolchinsky ask: what does it mean to be a womxn fighter (both inside and outside of the ring) in a world still dominated by men?
Leslie McGrath’s “The Dodo” examines aging and themes of disappearance, obligation, and extinction.
Allison Albino‘s Issue 21 poem “Annunciation” explores gender, power dynamics, and the tender mother-child dynamics in Biblical narratives.
Jessica Fischoff‘s “We Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Talk About” (Issue 21) explores womanhood, power, and the formation of self.
“No Alphabet” by Joanne Dominique Dwyer (Issue 20) opens, “If not for the lust of women…” and from there unfolds a list of consequential absences.
Explore poetry reflecting on women’s lives and women’s history in Issue 16’s portfolio, De Puerto Rico: Un año después de la tormenta | From Puerto Rico: One year after the storm, including poems by Mara Pastor presented in Spanish and in English translation by María José Giménez: “Homage to the Navel / Homenaje al Ombligo,” “Last Names on the Body / Apellidos en el Cuerpo,” and “Native Shore / Orilla Natal” and Peggy Robles-Alvarado’s “When Weathermen Insist Storms are Feminine” and ”To The Women Who Feel It In Their Bones.”
Explore poetry by Eliane Marques from Issue 20’s portfolio Writing from the Lusosphere: “The Rower of the Maré” and “Federal Intervention,” both translated by Tiffany Higgins, bring forth women’s stories from Brazil.

Fiction

In Issue 17’s portfolio, Stories from Syria, Shahla al-Ujayli’s “The Memoirs of Cinderella’s Slipper” (translated by Alice Guthrie) reimagines the Cinderella story through a young woman who seeks employment and empowerment against a backdrop of misogyny, protest, and violence.
In Issue 21’s portfolio of Arabic stories from Morocco, Latifa Baqa’s “Adam’s Apple,” translated by Nariman Youssef, captures the intricacies of writing, privacy, and female sexuality and desire.
“The Cassandras,” by Emma Sloley (Issue 21), captures the complex anxieties of women’s relationships with men and the comfort of female spaces.

Essays

In her essay, “All I Have is What I Have Given Away” (Issue 18), Susan R. Troccolo writes about her years in Italy, a slow reading of Dante, and an unlikely friendship with an older woman she meets along the way, Anna Lea Lelli.
“Hen Medic: Maude Abbott and the Dawn of Cardiology,” an excerpt from Gabriel Brownstein’s The Open Heart Club, describes the intense and important work of one of Canada’s first female physicians who was an expert on congenital heart disease.
In her Issue 20 essay, “In Search of a Homeplace,” LaToya Faulk writes about her grandmother, the ways that homes and bodies carry history, and her path towards defining her Black womanhood.
In “Land Not Theirs” (Issue 16), Madison Davis, reflects on womanhood, race, the role of the church in the lives of Black Americans, and her own relationship to spirituality and prayer.
In “The Idle Talk of Mothers and Daughters” (Issue 18), Danielle Batalion Ola reflects on cycles of care and abuse, the complexities of her relationship with her mother, and leaving Kaua’i as she comes of age.
Several essays from Issue 20’s portfolio, Writing from the Lusosphere, provide interesting perspectives on women’s history and contemporary experiences: In “Brief Exchanges” Susana Moreira Marques brings forward women’s voices as she explores the the complexities of womanhood and motherhood through a series of short vignettes. In “Her Borders Become Her,” Fátima Policarpo reflects on her early years in Portugal, growing up in California, and her difficult relationship with her adopted father’s mother, Belle, exploring themes of autonomy, care, and violence in the lives of women and girls. Oona Patrick’s “Nobody Goes to Mértola” reflects on heartbreak, loneliness, women’s creativity, the male imagination, and a 17th century love story between a Portuguese nun and a French officer, all against the backdrop of a remote artists’ residence in the Portuguese Alentejo.