Powerful truths in women's voices
“I did not invent a method of education, I simply gave some little children a chance to live.” Maria Montessori Born in 1870 in the town of Chiaravalle, Italy, Maria Montessori refused to follow the expected path for girls of her time. Defying the prejudice of the time, Montessori became the first woman to attend …
"Good women are rarely clever, and clever women are rarely good." Ada Issacs Menken Adah Issacs Menken (1835 to 1869) was a Civil War era actress, sex symbol, and pin-up girl. She was also a dedicated writer publishing 20 essays, 100 poems, and many newspaper articles. Menken may have been born Adelaide McCord in Chartrain …
Continue reading "Adah Issacs Menken on Working and Waiting"
In the 1930s Ida Pruitt, an American living in Peking, recorded the oral life history of Ning Lao T'ai-t'ai, the elderly mother of a man working for her husband. Ning lived in the city of Penglai in Shedong Province of China in second half of the 1800s and the early 1900s. Married to a man who was an opium …
Continue reading "Ning Lao T’ai-t’ai on the Life of a Beggar"
Barbara Ehrenreich is a well-known investigative reporter and social commentator. She has been called a myth buster and a muckraker for her unflagging devotion to uncovering the silent and contradictory spaces in our national persona. A chemist with a doctorate in cellular immunology, Ehrenreich has chosen to focus her life's work on changing the national discourse on …
"A woman's tongue is a candlewick. It is always burning." Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914-1977) spent most of her life in a favela in Sao Paola Brazil. To support her three children she collected cardboard and other trash, but many days her children had little to eat. She attended school until she was eight years old where she discovered …
Women, Words, and Wisdom 