This is my first Top Ten Tuesday! 

I've always been a bit of a history nerd, but as I became comfortable with calling myself a feminist, I realized I didn't know nearly enough about women in history. Or women's accomplishments in general. Or about people who don't identify as women or men. Or that people even existed that didn't identify as women or men. Or how bad the struggle still is all around the world. 

As I delved into feminist ideology, I also found the herstory genre. Here are my top ten herstory books for new (or any) feminists!

 

1. The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace - Lynn Povich  This was a great one for me becaue I have always thought of myself as a good girl too. I don't want anything special, just not to be held back by someone else's antiquated ideas about what I'm capable of. These girls loved their jobs and where they were working, they just wanted to be treated fairly and they were willing to go after that together. Loved it!
2. At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power - Danielle L. McGuire  I had learned a lot of the things covered in this book in Black History Month specials in middle and elementary school, but history just wasn't real to me back then. Of course, all these stories also get sanitized for children in schools so it's never as poignant as it should be. By the time we get to high school, we can recite the key points but it almost feels too late to actually digest and understand it. Then I read this book and it was like I heard it for the first time. More than the key points, this is a peak behind the curtain. It all finally made sense in a way that I never thought it could. 
3. The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution - Jonathan Eig I'd had no idea how bad it was before the mighty pill. I took it for granted. That'll never happen again. There are just too many things that we don't have to deal with or worry about or can take a stand against now that I can't even begin to explain the impact that little pill has made. Reading about it coming to fruition was fascinating. 
4. I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban - Christina Lamb,Malala Yousafzai I have been in awe of Malala since I first heard her story. She is an amazing young woman who has already done more with her life than most. What do you do after being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize? I can't wait to find out.
5. Narrative of Sojourner Truth (Dover Thrift Editions) - Sojourner Truth,Olive Gilbert  I had heard the name of Sojourner Truth countless times. I knew it from those same February showcases mentioned above. I just never knew much about her. It wasn't until I listened to one of the many famous actresses recite her "Ain't I a Woman?" speech that I realized I had to read her narrative. I love that speech. You can find it here, read by my favorite of the actresses who has done so. 
6. Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots - Deborah Feldman I never knew much about Hasidic Jews but this had sounded interesting when I first saw it and it was. I know it isn't the picture of modern Jewish life and probably doesn't paint the kindest of pictures about being a Hasidic Jew, but it was still interesting to read about a world that was so foreign and yet not so far from where I am. 
7. Fragments Of Gender - Lisa Lees This is a collection of essays that explore life along the gender spectrum, rather than stuck on one side of it or the other. I knew relatively little about transgender and non-binary gendered people, so this was a revelation at just the right time. Don't get me wrong, I still don't have all the answers and make faux pas around people about this sort of thing, but I know more than the average cisgendered person, I think. I hope. I'm still learning, but as I said at the beginning, this was a great place to start. It gave me that first idea about what people went through and that was invaluable. 
8. Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War - Leymah Gbowee  Another Nobel Laureate, Gbowee has accomplished great feats by what seems like sheer will. She is amazing beyond belief and hearing her story was remarkable. She just understands so much about everything, especially healing. If you have ever doubted what women could be capable of if we just stuck together, pick up this book! 
9. Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science-and the World - Rachel Swaby I LOVE a good anthology! I've even talked about it a few Femme Fridays ago. The thing about these anthologies is that they prove that while we may not have been prevalent, we have always been present in STEM and war and other places some say we don't belong. This book has one woman for every week to learn about that did great things in science. I tore through it much faster than that, though. It's one of my favorites. 

 

Ok, I only had nine of my herstory books that I could honestly put on this list. The others that are on my shelf are good, but I don't feel like they exemplify parts of the experience quite the same way these do. While I strive for diversity in my reading, I also realized that I don't reach all groups. 

I had hoped to read Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women by the time of this post, but it wasn't meant to be. I connected it anyway because what I saw in the table of contents led me to believe that I'll wish I had when I do get to read it. 

 

For more Top Ten Tuesday posts, check out the originator The Broke and the Bookish!

A brilliant and distressing book, and a needed one - a must-read for anyone interested in human rights, women's history, race, and justice. One knows going in that there's likely little of the latter to be found, but story after story still evokes anger and shock.

McGuire does a wonderful job of fleshing out the stories of well-known but misrepresented activists like Rosa Parks, often remembered as the weary woman too tired to give up her seat on a bus - an almost accidental symbol - rather than the fiery, lifelong activist she was. Other figures like Recy Taylor, Claudette Colvin, and Jo Ann Robinson are given proper recognition; these are women who survived unimaginable violence and injustice to spend their lives devoted to a struggle for change, and who refused to let their humanity be ignored. American history has few truly heroic figures, but there are certainly many to be found among these women.

"A black woman's body was never hers alone."

Importantly, McGuire ties in the under-explored and often untouchable subject of the underlying roles rape, sex, and gender played in racism and the civil rights movement, with the threat of black rape of white women used as a shield for the very real and unchecked epidemic of white men raping black women and murdering black men, often with no consequences whatsoever, and no protection offered to victims. It was sexual abuse and violence against women that first unified the civil rights movement, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott and some of the first court victories securing legal protection for black Americans against racial violence. However, women's roles in the movement were obscured almost immediately, both by the press and by the male leaders themselves.

I was thinking of this while re-reading Roxane Gay's essay about The Help:

http://therumpus.net/2011/08/the-solace-of-preparing-fried-foods-and-other-quaint-remembrances-from-1960s-mississippi-thoughts-on-the-help/

Gay speaks powerfully to what is left out of the modern narrative of the Jim Crow south - that things may have been bad, yes, but that's the way things were; it was another time, with as many good guys as bad guys. Such narratives, though, barely skim the surface of the true horrors of the time - in this case, 1960s Mississippi, an era and state covered in detail in At the Dark End of the Street - erasing voices like Parks's, Colvin's, and Taylor's for a feel-good story about the growth of a white protagonist. Truly, for the average American, these stories have to be sought out, as they are otherwise utterly obscured or, dangerously, forgotten.

It's a tough read, yes - one of the toughest I've read in awhile; there is no redeeming what was allowed to happen, no happy conclusion, but there is inspiration to be found in women who refused to let their humanity be stolen from them in the face of terrorism that seems so unimaginable. One can't help but see, though, how much of this legacy continues in the present day, and how high the cost of forgetting can be. There's still so much more to be done.

A charming, creative MG mystery with an added magical element.

Read This Review & More Like It At Ageless Pages Reviews

When I was in the 9-12 age range, some of my favorite books were mysteries, particularly the kind where no one got hurt and I got to play along at home. Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, "Alfred Hitchcock", (though I could never guess those twists. The diamond was in the python, who was in the acrobats' baton?!) I think Oona Crate and The Wizard of Dark Street would have made little-me very happy and will certainly become a mainstay in my house as my nieces enter their middle-grade years.

Dark Street is an entire city condensed into one very long road. At one end, an iron gate that opens into our world. At the other, a glass gate that opens into the world of the fae. But that gate doesn't open any more. Cut off from the magical world of Faerie for so long, Dark Street, and New York beyond, have very little magic to tap into, except for the Wizard. The Wizard lives in Pendulum House and is responsible for the street's magical needs. There must always be a Wizard on Dark Street, even if he's a rather mediocre one like Uncle Alexander. Fortunately, Oona is the most promising Wizard apprentice in some time. She has Natural Magic, unlike her uncle's Learned variety. Unfortunately, she has no interest in being a Wizard, after a tragedy several years before book start. 

First, Oona is fantastic. She's logical, resourceful, and brave. When she's thrust into the heart of a mystery, her immediate reaction isn't to fall to pieces, but to find a way to make it right. After being a Wizard didn't work out, she realizes what she really wants is to be a detective like her dad. She handles the career switch pretty maturely for a 12 year old and sets off to solve two seemingly unrelated mysteries. She's joined by a motley assortment of side characters who I wish had gotten more screen time. There's a talking animal sidekick, a wise servant, a prissy rich girl, a mysterious love interest, a timid witch, and the one who's not from around here. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time to flesh them out, what with them all being murder suspects, and that did show towards the end of the book when I realized that after 345 pages, I wasn't rock solid on any of the apprentice candidates names. 

The mystery is appropriately twisty, but not unfairly so. You may be able to guess the culprit relatively quickly, but the manner in which whodunit kept me guessing all book long. In the vein of old Nancy Drew stories, every single detail is vitally important and not a piece of candy can be overlooked in the conclusion. Including candy. And overturned stones. And cinnamon. 

The Wizard of Dark Street is a bright, smart Middle-Grade fantasy with a great protagonist and a world I'm eager to revisit. If I could give it a grade, (oh look, I can!) I'd say A and a gold star.