Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Diana Giovinazzo
Diana Giovinazzo is the co-creator of Wine, Women and Words, a weekly literary podcast featuring interviews with authors over a glass of wine. Diana is active within her local literary community as the president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Women’s National Book Association. Her debut novel, THE WOMAN IN RED, was released August 4, 2020. Her second novel, ANTOINETTE’S SISTER will be released January 11, 2022.
The Woman in Red is the story of Anita Garibaldi, best known as the wife of Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi. Are there special challenges to writing about a woman whose story has been overshadowed by that of her husband?
Giuseppe Garibaldi is one of the most famous men in Italian history, there is no shortage of books analyzing everything he did. On the flip side, there was virtually nothing on Anita, and if she was listed in a book the information was wrong. I mean so blatantly wrong to the point where I couldn’t even trust the source. The lack of information that I was able to get was not only a challenge but I continuously having to go back and double-check my sources against each other. No too book was the same and it was really frustrating.
What types of sources do you rely on to create rich fictional characters from obscure or poorly documented historical figures?
The books I had to primarily rely on were first-hand accounts from Giuseppe, their friends, and even Anita herself. In the end, those were the only sources I could truly trust. Which is so different from the book that I am currently working on where history books and biographies can be trusted. It’s a little weird. I am thankful I was able to use these resources though because it really helped me capture their voices and their feelings of what was happening.
Do you think Women’s History Month is important and why?
Women’s History Month is exceedingly important. For so long women’s history has been delegated to the fringes letting the contributions that women have made slip through the cracks of the historical record. Taking the month of March to pause and reflect on the women who came before us helps us remember and to preserve their memories for future generations.
And my questions for you: What woman in history has been influential for you?
There are so many ways to answer that question! There are women who taught me how to be the person I am. And women who fought for women’s rights and gave me opportunities I wouldn’t otherwise have enjoyed. But I think I’ll go with two historical figures who shaped my interest in women’s history.
The first is Clara Barton, the most famous of the women who nursed in the American Civil War and the founder of the American Red Cross. She was the subject of the first biography I ever read. (Not just the first biography of a woman. The first biography, period.) I was seven or eight at the time and reading everything that crossed my path. Barton captured my imagination, both in her own right and because it was the first time I learned that women could do Big Things. I was hooked.
The second is Lakshmi Bai, the Rani of Jhansi, who led her soldiers onto the battlefield to fight the British in the uprisings of 1857. She was a major figure in my master’s thesis and an important step on the road to writing Women Warriors.
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Want to know more about Diana Giovinazzo and her work?
Check out her website: https://dianagiovinazzo.com/
Follow her on Instagram: @dianagauthor
Follow her on Twitter: @dianagauthor
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Come back tomorrow for a great Women’s History Month story from friend of the Margins, Jack French.
Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Anna Malaika Tubbs
Anna Malaika Tubbs is the author of The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of MLK Jr., Malcolm X, and James Balwdin Shaped a Nation. She is also a Cambridge Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and a Bill and Melinda Gates Cambridge Scholar. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a BA in Anthropology, Anna received a Master’s from the University of Cambridge in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies. Outside of the academy she is an educator and DEI consultant. She lives with her husband, Michael Tubbs, and their son, Michael Malakai.
Take it away, Anna!
What inspired you to write about these women?
I have always been passionate about correcting the erasure of Black women. When I started my PhD I knew I wanted to bring attention to Black women who had been wrongfully forgotten. We often hear the saying that “behind every great man is a great woman,” a saying that really bothers me, because most likely in such cases that woman is right beside the man, if not leading him. So I wanted to think about things differently and introduce the woman before the man. I believe mothers are some of the most underappreciated and unseen people in society and I felt it was time to honor them with the attention and credit they deserve. With all of this in mind, I dove into researching mothers of famous Black men. When I came across Alberta’s, Berdis’s, and Louise’s stories that were filled with nuance, diversity, as well as similarities and intersections as a result of the closeness in their birthdays as well as their famous sons’ birthdays, I just knew I had to dive deeper and share their names with the world. Their lives offer guidance and encouragement for Black women today, they show us different ways to be women, Black women, Black mothers, activists, educators, and much more. They remind us how difficult the world can be while also showing us ways to actively change it.
Who are some of your favorite authors working in women’s history today?
I have so many, but I’ll list a few!
Isabel Wilkerson – what she was able to do with The Warmth of Other Suns and now Caste is deeply inspiring. Her research is crucial and her ability to translate years of work into beautiful narratives that allow us to understand difficult concepts easily is something I try to emulate.
Patricia Hill Collins – her extensive sociological work on all aspects of Black womanhood and Black feminism over decades provides the basis of so many projects, interventions, and policies that impact our lives. You simply cannot do research on anything concerning Black women without engaging in something Patricia Hill Collins produced.
Melissa Harris-Perry – She is the kind of public intellectual I hope to become. She is brilliant and she uses her work to inspire change within, but more importantly beyond, the Ivory tower. She reminds all Black women of our worth and the treatment we deserve even if we’ve been denied it time and time again in the United States. Sister Citizen is one of my all-time favorite books.
How can your book help us better understand the civil rights movement as well as our current political/social climate?
At the center of The Three Mothers is a discussion of the dehumanization of all Black people. Motherhood is about creation, the giving of life, and this role becomes even more powerful in communities that are denied humane treatment on a daily basis. We as a Black community are continuing a long-fought struggle for our humanity, dignity, and worth to be recognized. This book, by focusing on Black motherhood, acknowledges that fight and shows how despite the many ways that our humanity has been denied in our nation, we have continued to find ways to humanize ourselves, give life, and move our country forward.
The Three Mothers provides a perspective of a century of U.S. history through the eyes of Black mothers. Alberta King, Berdis Baldwin, and Louise Little were born within six years of each other, the first was born in the late 1890s, and the last of the three to die, passed away in the late 1990s. The book is a lesson on the way history has impacted the current fight we find ourselves in from the perspective of identities we do not highlight enough. We have much to learn from the generation before our revered civil rights heroes, we have much to learn from Black women, and we have much to learn from Black mothers.
Question for you – Who would you say are women warriors of today?
In Women Warriors, I concentrated on women for whom battle was not a metaphor. By that standard, some of the most amazing modern women warriors are the Kurdish women who fought against Isis. They are the subject of a new book by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, The Daughters of Kobani. I loved her previous book, Ashley’s War and I’m looking forward to this one.
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Want to know more about Anna Malika Stubbs and The Three Mothers?
Check out her website: https://annamalaikatubbs.com/
Follow her on Twitter: @annas_tea_
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Come back tomorrow for three questions and an answer with historical novelist Diana Giovinazzo.
Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Kathleen C. Stone
When Kathleen Stone mentioned They Called Us Girls as the possible title for her upcoming book about women professionals in the mid-twentieth century to a group of us who are all writing biographies of women, the response was a unanimous “yes!”.
Kathleen studied art history in college, went to law school and now is a writer of nonfiction. As a lawyer, she was law clerk to a federal judge, litigation partner at a firm and senior counsel at a financial institution. She also taught seminars on American law in six foreign countries, including as a Fulbright Senior Specialist. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues; more details are available on her website www.kathleencstone.com.
Since she was a young girl, Kathleen has been interested in boundary crossing women, and that led to her forthcoming book, They Called Us Girls: Stories of Female Ambition from Suffrage and Mad Men. A collective biography of seven women who pursued professional careers in an era when women were expected to stay home, it will be published by Cynren Press in the spring of 2022.
Take it away, Kathleen!
What works of women’s history have you read lately that you loved?
I’m excited to talk about three recent books. They’re all so good that I’m reading them simultaneously, or trying to.
First is Janice Nimura’s The Doctors Blackwell, which just came out in January. It’s about Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the U.S. to graduate from medical school, and her sister Emily, also a doctor. The family of nine children was left in poverty when their father died. The sisters overcame the odds, including the fact that women were not permitted to attend medical school. Elizabeth graduated in 1849, Emily in 1854. Doctors at the time got very little training, almost none of it clinical, and many of the theories behind medicine were not just archaic but also deleterious to the patient. Yet they tried to bring a new approach to their patients.
I first heard about Elizabeth Blackwell while researching my own book. I’m writing a collective biography of seven women with professional careers, and two happen to be doctors. I wanted to understand how things were for women doctors in earlier generations, and that’s how I came across Elizabeth. Janice expands the lens to include Emily. Not only does she tell their stories but she also gives a vivid sense of the era in which they lived, for doctors and society in general.
At the same time, I’m reading Suzanne Koven’s Letter to a Young Female Physician. It won’t actually be published until May but I was lucky to get an advance copy. By including Suzanne’s book, which is more current than historical, I have to define “women’s history” broadly, but I really want to mention this book. Suzanne practices internal medicine at Mass General, and this is a memoir, with an emphasis on her professional life. She also shares advice about medical practice that is aimed particularly at women doctors.
Then there’s Perri Klass’s book, A Good Time to be Born. Perri is a pediatrician in New York who writes prolifically about both medical history and medicine today. Her book covers the advances in pediatric medicine that occurred from the mid-nineteenth century to today. The historical perspective makes it a great complement to The Doctors Blackwell. Even though doctors were mostly male throughout history, women were very involved with caring for sick children, as mothers and nursemaids. When I read the wrenching stories of desperately ill children, many of whom died, I reacted as a mother. This book, too, fits within my generous definition of the genre.
I don’t often read about medicine, and I don’t have much technical background, but each of these books is completely accessible. Together they give an unparalleled look at what life was like for women involved with medicine, and what it’s like today. I’m so glad to have the chance to talk about them.
How did you choose the women you write about in They Called Us Girls?
To answer this, I have to give a bit of back story. When I was young, my mother was a stay-at-home mom, and so were all the other women in our neighborhood. This was typical for the era, particularly in a suburban environment like mine. Cultural messages, conveyed by books, TV and other media, reinforced this as the norm. But I knew that a few women had gone to law school with my father. This intrigued me, even as a young girl, and I wanted to know what made them different from the women I knew.
I became a lawyer myself. After many years of practice, I realized I was still wondering about these other women of my mother’s generation. Not just lawyers, but women across a spectrum of professions. I decided to interview some and find out what made them venture outside the mainstream of cultural expectations. After a few interviews I realized my project would turn into a book. Now it has fully blossomed into a collective biography of seven women who had unusual professional ambitions in the mid-twentieth century.
When I started, I thought it was important to find women from a variety of fields. I also wanted diversity in race, ethnicity and socio-economic background, in order to see how formative experiences and influences were shared across groups.
I began with two women I knew personally but then, in order to branch out, I searched the internet. I also browsed public library shelves and read magazines. I contacted some of the women whose names I found. Although I was a stranger to them, coming completely out of the blue, a number agreed to be interviewed. But I couldn’t have pulled off this project without friends and acquaintances, especially women friends. They were full of enthusiasm for what I was doing and anxious to help with suggestions and introductions.
In the end, the women who appear in my book were found through a combination of my having clear criteria for what I wanted to accomplish, and being open to serendipity in making connections.
They Called Us Girls is such a great title! It encapsulates the experiences of several generations of women in the work place. Can you tell us how you came to it?
Thanks for your enthusiasm. The short answer to your question is – not easily. When I was sending out queries, I had a different title with which I wasn’t totally happy, but I had run out of ideas. After I found a publisher, she asked me to rethink the title. That led to more brainstorming and even crowd sourcing. My sister-in-law is a PR and marketing genius, and she went to her colleagues for ideas. Their suggestions helped shape my thinking about what I liked and why. Finally, it dawned on me that the title was within the book all along, hiding in plain sight.
One of the women I write about worked at OSS during World War II and later at CIA. Before she started her job with OSS, she had to pass a typing test. I asked her if men had to meet the same requirement and, of course, the answer was no. Typing was reserved for “girls,” which was the lingo of the day. I’ve written about another woman who now is a federal judge, but when she graduated from law school, she could not get a job with a law firm. Not only did firms not hire women but, she said, “they called us girls.”
Finally, I remembered my mother’s stories about working for IBM in the 1940s. Her title was “Systems Service Girl.” IBM’s website today refers to the position as “system service representative” but I remember clearly what she said.
Women doing a grown-up job but being called a “girl” was a through line of the mid-twentieth era. The word can be used in an affectionate, inclusive way, but that wasn’t what happened here. Even when it wasn’t intended maliciously, it reflected a culture where women’s abilities were diminished. For the most part, the women in the book overcame that negative thinking, but I wanted the title to remind us of their challenge.
Question for Pamela: Recently I heard you on a podcast, the Gal’s Guide to the Galaxy. You were talking about Maria Botchkareva, a Russian woman soldier during World War One. She was intrepid and fearless but ended up on the wrong side of history, meaning she was executed by the Bolsheviks for being an “enemy of the working class.” Clearly not a story where the woman ends up victorious. In the genre of women’s history, how effectively do writers today portray women as complicated beings who have flaws, make bad judgments and sometimes meet an unhappy end?
Back before women’s history was a recognized genre, there was a tradition of writing biographies of women to provide female role models for girls. Because those books were written for children, the rough edges were smoothed off. (Though part of what I loved about those biographies as a child was the fact that the women who accomplished things were never traditional good girls. They were Jo, not Meg; Laura, not Mary. )
Today I don’t know of anyone writing women’s history, for adults or children, who doesn’t at least try to address the complexity, the flaws, and the mistakes as well as the heroic aspects of individual women’s stories. Quite frankly, it’s more interesting.
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Want to know more about Kathleen Stone and her work?
Visit her website: https://kathleencstone.com/
Follow her on Twitter: @KathleenCStone
Sign up for her newsletter:
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Come back tomorrow for three questions and an answer with Anna MalaikaiTubbs, author of The Three Mothers.