Women’s National Book Association just released100 Fiction Books by American Womenand100 Nonfiction Books by American Women. The nonfiction list, excluding memoirs, features the achievements of American women. Each week, we’ll feature authors from the lists. In honor of March being Women’s History Month, we continue our series with a few books highlighting women’s impacts on society.
History
Originally published by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper as six volumes from 1881-1922 under the title History of Woman Suffrage, eighty-two reports, speeches and recollections make up The Concise History of Woman Suffrage: Selections from History of Woman Suffrage. Editors Paul and Mari Jo Buhle wrote an introduction and condensed, organized and improved the voluminous text to make the information more readable to readers.
Social Science
In Women, Race & Class, political activist and scholar Angela Davis reveals the once-unmentioned racist and classist biases of the women’s liberation movement leaders. These sources of contention spanning from the abolitionist days to today impede true progress in the quest for civil rights and resolving working class issues. Davis’ ultimate message: the intersections of class, race and gender cannot be ignored in the fight for equality.
Economics
Barbara Ehrenreich took on jobs as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson in various states to investigate how low-wage Americans survive on salaries of $6- $7 an hour. She documented her experiences in Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. She admits there’s no such thing as an “unskilled” job, and that you often need more than one job to afford a roof over your head and life’s other basic necessities.
Health
The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, now known by the same name as their bestselling book Our Bodies, Ourselves, is a nonprofit education and advocacy organization that focuses on women’s health. Decades after making its debut as a 196-page pamphlet, Ourselves has undergone several revisions and has been bought by millions of women of all ages. Crucial information that runs the full gamut of women’s bodies, sexuality, reproductive and sexual health, gender identity, sexual orientation, birth control, abortion, pregnancy, birth, perimenopause are covered. The health care system, safer sex, environmental health risks, body image and local and global activism are also explained.
Click here to check out a few books from the 100 Books List written by Black women in honor of Black History Month. For the full list of 100 Fiction Books by American Women, clickhere, and for the full list of 100 Nonfiction Books by American Women ishere.
