Anonymous Is a Woman: A Global Chronicle of Gender Inequality by Nina Ansary
What a beautiful book with gorgeous illustrations,
an attention-getting, conversation-starting, high-quality paperback - the print job itself is worth five stars. So, too, are the water-color portraits of each woman forgotten by history. Each short biography is well written, compelling, and pithy.
But who painted these lovely portraits, these watercolors? I've searched in vain, inside the book and at the site, for the identity of this illustrator. Was it done with photoshop? Even so, a graphic artist deserves some credit.
Accomplished women who are already famous, such as Marie Curie, Margaret Sanger, Sacagawea, and Pocahontas, are not in this collection, which focuses on the 'obscure lives' of fifty forgotten female innovators. Still, I would have liked to see some Native American warrior women included here. Lozen was the "right hand" of Geronimo. Like Lozen, a Mescalero Apache warrior woman Dahteste could out-ride, out-shoot, out-hunt, out-run, and out-fight her peers, male and female, with grace. Courageous, daring and skillful, she took part in battles and raiding parties alongside her husband and Geronimo. Why are these names, Lozen and Dahteste, not household names like Pocahantas?
"Indigenous people, and especially indigenous women across the world and time, have always been kept in the shadows of well-documented history," Ansary writes. A few of them do make it into this book, but not for their military prowess. "Redbird," Zitkála-Šá, also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, wrote the libretto for the first opera by a Native American. She was a Yankton Dakota Sioux writer, editor, translator, musician, educator, and political activist.
I'd heard of Redbird but not Shanawdithit, the last known living member of the Beothuk people in what is now Newfoundland. The last of her line! Starvation, tuberculosis, and attacks by white trappers and fishermen had reduced the Beothuks to only a few remaining families by the early 1800s. With no friends or family left, Shanawdithit became a domestic servant in the white settlement at Exploits, where learned enough English to tell the story of her people. Much of what we know about them today is thanks to Shanawdithit's stories and drawings. Shanawdithit also helped change the public perception of indigenous people as ignorant savages. Her dignity, charm, talent, and intelligence are celebrated today, but it took more than a hundred years for the statues, books, and an opera ("Tapestry," which premiered in Toronto, May 16-25, 2019) to bring her name into public awareness.
Shanawdithit (ca. 1801 - June 6, 1829)
One name is (or should be) better known than most in this collection: the first African American pilot, Bessie Colman, who was "turned away by every flying school that approached because of her race and gender," so she moved to France in 1920, earned her international pilot's license, and performed at countless air shows upon returning to the U.S. She died in 1926 at age 34 when her plane nosedived to the earth.
"Although there has been some progress, and in some cases cause to celebrate, women are still in the midst of an arduous journey toward full gender equality throughout the world," Ansary writes in Chapter Two, where she focuses less on the number of women in positions of power and influence, and more on the continuing hurdles. In spite of STEM camps (science, technology, engineering, and math for girls), mot people interviewed report that they still don't see a lot of women in science. Obituaries too: "Women are not only underrepresented when they are alive but also when they passed on," Ansary tells us. Poets, sculptors, astronomers, crusaders, athletes, explorers: see if you recognize any of the names on the "Overlooked" list.
While no one book can serve as a comprehensive history of women overlooked and forgotten, despite their extraordinary achievements and innovations, this one is a fantastic place to start.
100% of all proceeds from the sale of the book go to charitable organizations and institutions.
Dr. Nina Ansary is an internationally recognized Iranian-American scholar, award-winning author and women's rights advocate.
Connect with Nina on Twitter (
- AmazonVine provided me with an Advance Reader Copy of this book.
Description
In 1929, British novelist Virginia Woolf ran her fingers along the spines of the books in her library wondering why no woman in Shakespeare’s era had written “a word of that extraordinary literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet.” She concluded, “Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” Nearly a century after Woolf penned those incisive words, frequently modified as “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman,” the phenomenon of female anonymity persists as women worldwide continue to be restricted by society’s formal and unspoken barriers. Why does Virginia Woolf’s statement still echo in the twenty-first century? Why have women been consistently denied opportunities that are automatically given to men? And why has the historical record failed to adequately recognize notable women? Anonymous Is a Woman: A Global Chronicle of Gender Inequality takes readers on a 4,000-year historic journey to expose the roots and manifestations of institutionalized gender discrimination; dismantle centuries of historical bias through biographical profiles of fifty remarkable, yet forgotten women innovators; and challenge ingrained stereotypical assumptions to advance an unconventional argument for equality and inclusivity.
source: NetGalley
"They represent a mere fraction of the thousands of women
who deserve proper recognition for their extraordinary contributions in practically every sector, yet have been relegated to the back pages of history," Anasary said in an email interview with ELLE.com.
source: ELLE.com
Dr. Nina Ansary on Twitter
Immensely grateful to Elle Magazine for the Q&A on my upcoming book ANONYMOUS IS A WOMAN: A GLOBAL CHRONICLE OF GENDER INEQUALITY (Revela Press / March 8).
http://bit.ly/nina-ellemagazine
@ELLEmagazine