Howe Library celebrates Women’s History Month! Check out our New Books Spotlight for books featuring women who tell our stories.
Finding me : a memoir by Viola Davis (Audiobook via OverDrive)
"In my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life-changing decision to stop running forever. This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose but also my voice in a world that didn't always see me. As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination. We are forced to reinvent them to fit into a crazy, competitive, judgmental world. So I wrote this for anyone running through life untethered, desperate and clawing their way through murky memories, trying to get to some form of self-love. For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be . . . you. Finding Me is a deep reflection, a promise, and a love letter of sorts to self. My hope is that my story will inspire you to light up your own life with creative expression and rediscover who you were before the world put a label on you."
Shirley Chisholm : champion of Black feminist power politics by Anastasia C. Curwood (Print)
"Shaking up New York and national politics by becoming the first African American congresswoman and, later, the first Black major-party presidential candidate, Shirley Chisholm left an indelible mark as an 'unbought and unbossed' firebrand and a leader in politics for meaningful change. Anastasia C. Curwood interweaves Chisholm's public image, political commitments, and private experiences to create a definitive account of a consequential life"
The color pynk : black femme art for survival by Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley (eBook)
"The Color Pynk is a passionate exploration of Black femme poetics of survival. Sidelined by liberal feminists and invisible to mainstream civil rights movements, Black femmes spent the Trump years doing what they so often do best: creating politically engaged art, entertainment, and ideas. In the first full-length study of Black queer, cis-, and trans-femininity, Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley argues that this creative work offers a distinctive challenge to power structures that limit how we color, gender, and explore freedom."
Taste makers : seven immigrant women who revolutionized food in America by Mayukh Sen (Print)
"America's modern culinary history told through the lives of seven pathbreaking chefs and food writers. Who's really behind America's appetite for foods from around the globe? This group biography from an electric new voice in food writing honors seven extraordinary women, all immigrants, who left an indelible mark on the way Americans eat today. Taste Makers stretches from World War II to the present, with absorbing and deeply researched portraits of figures including Mexican-born Elena Zelayeta, a blind chef; Marcella Hazan, the deity of Italian cuisine; and Norma Shirley, a champion of Jamaican dishes. In imaginative, lively prose, Mayukh Sen-a queer, brown child of immigrants-reconstructs the lives of these women in vivid and empathetic detail, daring to ask why some were famous in their own time, but not in ours, and why others shine brightly even today. Weaving together histories of food, immigration, and gender, Taste Makers will challenge the way readers look at what's on their plate-and the women whose labor, overlooked for so long, makes those meals possible”
Fearless women : feminist patriots from Abigail Adams to Beyoncé by Elizabeth Cobbs (Print)
"Cobbs traces the long history of American feminism, dating back to the Revolution, when the founding principle of equality became a battering ram against hierarchy. She tells this story through the public and private lives of 16 women who pushed the boundaries of their times and insisted on their right to control their bodies and their lives”
Readme.txt : a memoir by Chelsea Manning (Print)
"While working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq for the United States Army in 2010, Chelsea Manning disclosed more than seven hundred thousand classified military and diplomatic records that she had smuggled out of the country on the memory card of her digital camera. In 2011 she was charged with twenty-two counts related to the unauthorized possession and distribution of classified military records, and in 2013 she was sentenced to thirty-five years in military prison. The day after her conviction, Manning declared her gender identity as a woman and began to transition, seeking hormones through the federal court system. In 2017, President Barack Obama commuted her sentence and she was released from prison. Manning recounts how her pleas for increased institutional transparency and government accountability took place alongside a fight to defend her rights as a trans woman. Manning details the challenges of her childhood and adolescence as a naive, computer-savvy kid, what drew her to the military, and the fierce pride she has about the work she does. This powerful, observant memoir will stand as one of the definitive testaments of our digital, information-driven age.”
Sarahland : stories by Sam Cohen (Print)
"In SARAHLAND, Sam Cohen brilliantly (and often hilariously) explores the ways in which traditional stories have failed us, giving its cast of Sarahs new origin stories, new ways to love the planet and those inhabiting it, and new possibilities for life itself. In one story, a Jewish college girl named Sarah suffers from passively consenting to a form-life devoted to getting one's "mrs." degree. Yet another reveals a version of Sarah finally finding peace with her favorite local necrophiliac. A Buffy-loving Sarah continues her misguided search for self in a twin-- while probing fan culture. As the collection progresses, Cohen explodes this search for self, insisting that we have more to resist and repair than our own personal narrative. Readers watch as the ever-evolving "Sarah" gets recast: as a biblical trans woman, a lesbian literally growing roots, a being who transcends the earth as we know it. While Cohen presents a world that will clearly someday end, "Sarah" will continue. In each Sarah's refusal to adhere to a single narrative, she might even help build a better home for all of us, a place to live that demands no fixity of self, no plague of consumerism, no bodily compromise, a place called SARAHLAND"
The body is not an apology : the power of radical self-love by Sonya Renee Taylor (Print)
"Humans are a varied and divergent bunch with all manner of beliefs, morals, and bodies. Systems of oppression thrive off our inability to make peace with difference and injure the relationship we have with our own bodies. The Body Is Not an Apology offers radical self-love as the balm to heal the wounds inflicted by these violent systems. World-renowned activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor invites us to reconnect with the radical origins of our minds and bodies and celebrate our collective, enduring strength. As we awaken to our own indoctrinated body shame, we feel inspired to awaken others and to interrupt the systems that perpetuate body shame and oppression against all bodies. When we act from this truth on a global scale, we usher in the transformative opportunity of radical self-love, which is the opportunity for a more just, equitable, and compassionate world--for us all. This second edition includes stories from Taylor's travels around the world combating body terrorism and shines a light on the path toward liberation guided by love. In a brand new final chapter, she offers specific tools, actions, and resources for confronting racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia. And she provides a case study showing how radical self-love not only dismantles shame and self-loathing in us but has the power to dismantle entire systems of injustice. Together with the accompanying workbook, Your Body Is Not an Apology, Taylor brings the practice of radical self-love to life."