Heather Stewart Poetry

There was a time when it was difficult for to find women’s stories other than my own family and celebrities. Then I went way down the rabbit hole on women’s memoirs. I actually had a book blog for a while and did Memoir Mondays.

When I took down the blog, after a major life shift, I also deleted my Goodreads account and I’ve been working on recapturing my TBR and Read lists. Mostly my Read list. I had read so many amazing women’s memoirs.

The thing is that it is entirely possible to think that memoirs are mostly celebrities, politicians, and generals, but there are SO MANY out there. From so many women in so many walks of life and backgrounds. I even spent a year reading memoirs that kept up with the heritage months, so it was some fairly diverse reading. I also tried to read as many of the female Nobel Laureates as possible.

Even though Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t break two layers of the glass ceiling, she absolutely broke one. She is still the first woman to be elected and serve as Vice President of the US. We’ve now had two women be running mates for presidential elections, one of which won, and two women run for president. There’s a metric somewhere that will finally get us there.

Art is gonna be a part of it. I know I’ve seen women on television and in movies serve in all kinds of offices well before we had them in real life. I’ve seen plenty be Vice President and President of the US. I also remember reading the Notorious R.B.G and her comments about taking baby steps. A landslide win always has a backslide. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but that was my take away.

We’ve made incredible progress in many ways and while it’s not time to give up, it does feel like time to take a breath, regroup, and figure out the next best step. For me, that includes promoting and reading women’s stories. I’ve seen a lot on social media about black women’s stories, and while I completely support that, I wouldn’t stop there. Yes, black women, but black women of all nationalities in all continents. Also Hispanic women of all nationalities, mixed women, Persian women, Arabian women, Asian women… and so on.

To help you get started, here is a link to my Bookshop.org book list for women’s stories that I read and recommend. It is an affiliate link, so I would get a commission or whatever from purchases, but I encourage you to buy from whatever store makes you comfortable. I’m still compiling the list and will read more women’s stories, but there is a lot here to get started. And yes, some of these are banned books too.

Women’s Stories that I’ve Read and Recommend

I’ll be adding to it as I read new books or find more that I had read and loved already. I’ll also be making a list soon of feminist theory books that don’t fall within the genre of memoir, herstory, or biography, but that do talk about the status of women in different ways such as books that extensively research a single part of life or progress. My hope is that if we can grow to understand each other better, maybe we will support each other more. It always seemed to workout that way for me in the military with the women I worked with.

Happy Reading!