American Women Biographies

If Crazy Rich Asians and a Greek tragedy had a literary offspring, it would be the spitting image of Why Should Guys Have All the Fun? The true story of resolute immigration lawyer and activist Loida Lewis, Why Should Guys Have All the Fun? begins with Loida's adventure-packed Philippine upbringing. A torrid love affair with brilliant, irascible financier Reginald Lewis follows, as does regal living in Manhattan and Paris, and gut-wrenching loss, all before Loida shockingly commandeers a multibillion-dollar, multinational conglomerate and leads it with aplomb.

On June 26, 2018, 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a bartender from New York City, became the youngest woman ever elected to serve on Congress. Her win shocked the political world, and she became a celebrity overnight. Soon, everyone knew her by her initials: AOC. As soon as she was sworn into office, AOC became a vocal champion for healthcare for all and the fight against climate change. This exciting story details the defining moments of what led to her victory and all the monumental ones since that have shaped her into a smart politician willing to fight for others.

Dr. Antonia Novello is a vanguard in the United States and Puerto Rico, whose enduring commitment to service has left an indelible mark on the world of public health. Dr. Novello's story is one of challenges faced and overcame, and of shattering glass ceilings and opening doors for future generations of leaders.

When 16-year-old Mytrae Meliana and her family emigrate from India to the US, she is determined to avoid the arranged marriage her family expects her to have, and to create her own destiny. But when she falls in love with an American man, her family drags the talented graduate student back to India and keeps her hostage.

Florence Maybrick was the first American woman to be sentenced to death in England - for murdering her husband, a crime she almost certainly didn't commit. Her 1889 trial was presided over by an openly misogynist judge who was later declared incompetent and died in an asylum. Hours before she was to be hanged, Queen Victoria reluctantly commuted her sentence to life in prison. In her opinion, a woman who would commit adultery, as Maybrick had admitted, would also kill her husband. Her children were taken from her; she never saw them again. Her mother worked for years to clear her name.

Willie Johnson. Granddaughter of a slave. Rejected by her father. Sold by her mother. Abused by her husband. How did a biracial woman become accepted to preach revivals in the Deep South and coast to coast during segregation and the Civil Rights movement. Listen to Through the Waters and learn how to rise above your obstacles from the inspiring life and ministry of Willie Johnson.

A meningitis outbreak in their underprivileged neighborhood left Sylvia Acevedo's family forever altered. As she struggled in the aftermath of loss, young Sylvia's life transformed when she joined the Brownies. The Girl Scouts taught her how to take control of her world and nourished her love of numbers and science.

When Aida Hernandez was born in 1987 in Agua Prieta, Mexico, the nearby US border was little more than a worn-down fence. Eight years later, Aida’s mother took her and her siblings to live in Douglas, Arizona. By then, the border had become one of the most heavily policed sites in America. Undocumented, Aida fought to make her way. She learned English, watched Friends, and, after having a baby at 16, dreamed of teaching dance and moving with her son to New York City. But life had other plans.

As a young girl, Selena Quintanilla sang in a band called Selena y Los Dinos with her brother and sister. The family performed at fairs, weddings, quinceañeras, and on street corners in their native Texas. Selena learned how to sing in Spanish and soon became hugely popular within the Latino community - so much so that she became the best-selling Latin artist of the 1990s.

Born Bright, C. Nicole Mason's powerful memoir, is a story of reconciliation, constrained choices, and life on the other side of the tracks. Born in the 1970s in Los Angeles, California, Mason was raised by a beautiful but volatile 16-year-old single mother. Early on, she learned to navigate between an unpredictable home life and school, where she excelled. By high school, Mason was seamlessly straddling two worlds.

Heroines of Mercy Street tells the true stories of the nurses at Mansion House, the Alexandria, Virginia, mansion turned wartime hospital and setting for the new PBS drama Mercy Street. Among the Union soldiers, doctors, wounded men from both sides, freed slaves, politicians, speculators, and spies who passed through the hospital in the crossroads of the Civil War were nurses who gave their time freely and willingly to save lives and aid the wounded.

On March 14, 1889, Susan La Flesche received her medical degree - becoming the first Native American doctor in US history. She earned her degree 31 years before women could vote and 35 years before Indians could become citizens in their own country. This is the story of an Indian woman who effectively became the chief of an entrenched patriarchal tribe, the story of a woman who crashed through thick walls of ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice and then spent the rest of her life using a unique bicultural identity to improve the lot of her people.

Harriet Tubman is best known as one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad. As a leading abolitionist, her bravery and selflessness has inspired generations in the continuing struggle for civil rights. Now, National Book Award nominee Erica Armstrong Dunbar presents a fresh take on this American icon blending traditional biography and engaging sidebars that illuminate the life of Tubman as never before.

Inspired by the recent wave of activism led by young people fighting for racial justice, civil rights icon Ruby Bridges - who, at the age of 6, was the first Black child to integrate an all-White elementary school in New Orleans - shares her story and offers a powerful call to action with this elegant audiobook.

Sacagawea was the only girl, and the only Native American, to join Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery, which explored the United States from the Mississippi River all the way to the Pacific Ocean in the early 1800s. As a translator, she helped the team communicate with members of the Shoshone tribe across the continent, carrying her child on her back the whole way. By the time the expedition arrived at the west coast, Sacagawea had proved that she truly was a trailblazer.

An American aristocrat - a descendant of founding father John Jay - Susan Mary Alsop (1918–2004) with husband, Joe Alsop, brought together the movers and shakers of not just the United States, but the world. Henry Kissinger remarked that more agreements were concluded in her living room than in the White House. Born in Rome, brought up in Argentina and the United States, Susan Mary arrived in Paris in 1945 to join her first husband, Bill Patten. There she witnessed "history on the boil" at dinners with Winston Churchill, Duff Cooper (the British ambassador and the love of her life), FDR, Greta Garbo, and many others.

In this provocative and captivating dialogue, bell hooks and Cornel West come together to discuss the dilemmas, contradictions, and joys of Black intellectual life. The two friends and comrades in struggle talk, argue, and disagree about everything from community to capitalism in a series of intimate conversations that range from playful to probing to revelatory. In evoking the act of breaking bread, the book calls upon the various traditions of sharing that take place in domestic, secular, and sacred life.

For a woman traveling without her husband in the late nineteenth century, there was only one reason to take the train all the way to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, one sure to garner disapproval from fellow passengers. On the American frontier, the new state offered a tempting freedom often difficult to obtain elsewhere: divorce. In The Divorce Colony, writer and historian April White unveils the incredible social, political, and personal dramas that unfolded in Sioux Falls and reverberated around the country through the stories of four very different women.

For the first time, Euna Lee - the young wife, mother, and film editor detained in North Korea - tells a harrowing, but ultimately inspiring, story of survival and faith in one of the most isolated parts of the world. On March 17, 2009, Lee and her Current TV colleague Laura Ling were working on a documentary about the desperate lives of North Koreans fleeing their homeland for a chance at freedom when they were violently apprehended by North Korean soldiers.

1976. A 22-year-old Japanese American woman enters the management ranks of a major corporation and encounters...just what you'd expect. Sexism. Misogyny. Racial bias. And she breaks barriers anyway. From the moment Elaine Koyama was hired as a management trainee at agri-business giant Cargill, Inc., she found herself entangled in the endless fight to wedge herself through the doors the women's movement opened.