Women Nonfiction

The ghost of a weeping woman dressed in white, La Llorona, is often spotted beside bodies of water. People in Mexico and in the southwestern United States have claimed to hear her wailing in the night, crying out for her drowned children. This centuries-old legend says that if the wailing woman gets too close, she will drag you to a watery grave.

Your body is a sacred treasure, a worshipful instrument, and a unique masterpiece! That’s a pretty big deal. But sometimes it feels confusing, awkward, and flawed. The truth is: You and your body, all of it, are important and beautiful, designed especially by God with a specific plan and purpose. Each chapter in Perfectly Unique focuses on a different part of your body and the potential it has for helping grow your faith.

In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first American woman to obtain a medical degree. Following in her footsteps in the early 1980s, Brenda Berkman was the first woman to challenge New York City’s ban on female firefighters. During the last few centuries, countless women have made amazing contributions to society. Women are now Nobel Peace Prize winners, world-class athletes, and talented inventors and adventurers.

Six-year old Susan helps her grandmother in the kitchen and begins to learn the role of women in the household. It is 1825. Women are not allowed to vote and by law must obey their husbands. Seeing how hard the women of her family work, she is struck by the unfairness of such a law.

In the early 1900s, women were dying in large numbers from treatable diseases because they avoided receiving medical care. Examinations performed by male doctors were often demeaning and even painful. In addition, women faced stigma from illness—a diagnosis could greatly limit their ability to find husbands, jobs or be received in polite society. Motivated by personal loss and frustration over inadequate medical care, Elizabeth Blackwell, Lizzie Garret Anderson and Sophie Jex-Blake fought for a woman's place in the male-dominated medical field.

Paris in the 1940s was a place of fear, power, aggression, courage, deprivation, and secrets. During the occupation, the swastika flew from the Eiffel Tower and danger lurked on every corner. While Parisian men were either fighting at the front or captured and forced to work in German factories, the women of Paris were left behind where they would come face to face with the German conquerors on a daily basis, as waitresses, shop assistants, or wives and mothers, increasingly desperate to find food to feed their families as hunger became part of everyday life.

A finalist for the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Award, Sue Macy’s Wheels of Change offers young listeners an ear-opening account of how, beginning in the late 19th century, the bicycle helped change the course of women’s history. Macy meticulously documents how women used the freedom of their newfound mobility to effect social change, even in the face of constant challenges.

What kind of mother abandons her child? During the pandemic, trapped at home with young children and struggling to find creative space to write, journalist Begoña Gómez Urzaiz became fixated on artistic women who overcame both society’s condemnation and their own maternal guilt to leave their children—at will or due to economic or other circumstances. The Abandoners is sharp, at times slyly humorous, and always deeply empathetic.

It was the biggest event in the history of women's sports. And for the Americans, it came down to five kicks. After regulation play and two overtimes in the final game of the 1999 women's World Cup soccer match, the score was 0-0. Penalty kicks would decide the world champion. The Chinese and the Americans would each pick five players. One kick per player. With the score tied 4-4, the Americans had one more chance to win it all.

As featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary Crip Camp, and for fans of I Am Malala, one of the most influential disability rights activists in US history tells her story of fighting to belong.

This book chronicles the long history of the fight for women's voting rights, beginning in 1848, with a focus on the years between 1913 and 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment was passed. The book includes profiles of notable women in the struggle.

Passionate, freethinking existentialist philosopher-writers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre are one of the world's legendary couples. Their committed but notoriously open union generated no end of controversy in their day. Biographer Hazel Rowley offers the first dual portrait of these two colossal figures and their intense, often embattled relationship. Through original interviews and access to new primary sources, Tête-à-Tête magnificently details the passion, daring, humor, and contradictions of a remarkably unorthodox relationship.

In The Gutsy Girl, author Caroline Paul emboldens girls to seek out lives of exhilaration. Once a young scaredy-cat herself, Caroline decided that fear got in the way of the life she wanted - of excitement, confidence, self-reliance, friendship, and fun. She has since flown planes, rafted big rivers, climbed tall mountains, and fought fires as one of the first female firefighters in San Francisco.

Considering herself unsuitable for any other contribution to the war effort, Monica Dickens opts for nursing, imagining herself gliding through the wards, serene in a pure white halo cap. On enrolment, however, she is promptly stripped of all illusions. Intelligent and headstrong, Monica struggles to submit to the iron rule of the Matron and toils over the mountains of menial work that are a trainee's lot. But there are friends among the staff and patients, night-time escapades to dances with dashing army men and her secret writing project to keep her going.

In Just Ask, United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor celebrates the different abilities kids (and people of all ages) have. Using her own experience as a child who was diagnosed with diabetes, Justice Sotomayor writes about children with all sorts of challenges - and looks at the special powers those kids have as well. As the kids work together to build a community garden, asking questions of each other along the way, this book encourages listeners to do the same.

In this biography anthology, meet 34 artists, thinkers, athletes and activists with disabilities, from past and present. From Frida Kahlo to Stephen Hawking, find out how these iconic figures have overcome obstacles, owned their differences and paved the way for others by making their bodies and minds work for them.

The aspects of Anne Boleyn's life and death are fiercely debated by historians, yet her ladies-in-waiting remain an understudied topic. Much emphasis is usually put on Anne's relationships with the men in her life: her suitors, her royal husband, her father and brother, and her putative lovers who were executed on May 17, 1536. By concentrating on a previously neglected area of Anne Boleyn's female household, this book seeks to identify the women who served Anne and investigate what roles ladies-in-waiting played in this Queen's household.

Each entry in this series is a biography of a significant historical figure, told in a simple, conversational, vivacious way, and always focusing on a character trait that makes the person a role model for kids. The heroes tell their life stories in first-person present tense, which keeps the books playful and accessible to young children. This 10th audiobook in the series features Jane Goodall, the scientist and conservationist who is famous for her work with chimpanzees.

Situated in the early decades of the magnificent Mughal Empire, this first ever biography of Princess Gulbadan offers an enthralling portrait of a charismatic adventurer and unique pictures of the multicultural society in which she lived. Following a migratory childhood that spanned Kabul and north India, Gulbadan spent her middle years in a walled harem established by her nephew Akbar to showcase his authority as the Great Emperor.

Viola Desmond was an accidental game changer. She built a career as a beautician and businesswoman. But her one act of defiance triggered a revolution in which the Black people of Nova Scotia began to stand up for their rights. Back in the days, there was an unspoken rule on segregation based on color. Viola challenged that rule when she stood in court.