The Little Book of Feminist Saints by Julia Pierpont
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
When I first picked this book, I thought, oh another book about famous women. Wonder if I’ll learn anything new.
Answer, yes, yes, I did.
This is more than just short histories of famous women. This is a collection that calls out why these women are famous and should be known about, and what they were known about. Yes, it is odd to make it out to be saint days, but why not?
And these are not light little nothings about famous women. These are all statements of why we should honor and listen to these women from the past and present.
For example, here is the excerpt about Rachel Carson, whose feast day is April 14:
The cancer had metastasized and her body had burns fromt he radiation.
Even the wig she wore when she went out was hot and itchy. And no one-her critis in particular-could k now of her condition, for fear it might be used to call her objectivity into question:
Silent Spring’s unprecedented claim was that petrochemicals were linked to human cancer. That day in San Franscico, she emphasized the urgency of her findings. “We behave,
not like people guided by scientific knowledge, but more like the poverbial bad housekeeper who sweeps dirt under the rug in the hope of getting it out of site.” “The Pollution of Our Environment”
would be her last speech: she died six months later.
And here is part of the excerpt about Nina Simone, the matron saint of soul:
“When I heard about the bombing of the church in which the four little balck girsl were killed in Alabama,” she said, “I shut myself up in a room and that song happened.”
The result was “Missisippi Goddam,” a rallying cry for the movement and one of Simone’s most famous protest songs.
Everybody knows about Missisippi-goddam.
And while I had heard and knew of Nellie Bly, the famous female journalist, I had not considered how important her story on the Insane Asylum was. And although I knew that Frances Perkins was the first female member of a U.S. president’s cabinate, I was not aware of how much work she did to make the Social Security Act be established, or minimum wages, or the forty-hour work week, and the banning of child labour.
This is a great book to get people to read, and realize how many great women are out there that we should know more about.
Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.