Biography & Autobiography : Women

Growing up in a half-white, half-brown town and family in South Texas, Stephanie Elizondo Griest struggled with her cultural identity. Upon turning thirty, she ventured to her mother's native Mexico to do some root-searching and stumbled upon a social movement that shook the nation to its core. Mexican Enough chronicles her adventures rumbling with luchadores (professional wrestlers), marching with rebel teachers in Oaxaca, investigating the murder of a prominent gay activist, and sneaking into a prison to meet with indigenous resistance fighters. She also visits families of the undocumented workers she befriended back home. Travel mates include a Polish thief, a Border Patrol agent, and a sultry dominatrix. Part memoir, part journalistic reportage, Mexican Enough illuminates how we cast off our identity in our youth, only to strive to find it again as adults -- and the lessons to be learned along the way. more...

Price: $11.99

In Persia in 1924, when a child still had to worry about hostile camels in the bazaar and a nanny might spin stories at her pillow until her eyes fell shut, the extraordinary and irresistible Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian was born. From the enchanted basement storeroom where she played as a girl to the penthouse high above New York City where she would someday live, this is the delightful and inspiring story of her life as an artist, a wife and mother, a collector, and an Iranian. more...

Price: $15.95

Moyra Caldecott reveals the many levels of her own life as a writer and the extraordinary events and experiences that have inspired her life and writing. more...

Price: $5.99

In this striking autobiography, Puah Rakovksy (1865-1955) tells of her experiences as a Jewish woman in later 19th- and early 20th-century Poland who broke with her traditional upbringing to become a professional educator, Zionist activist, and feminist leader. Her passionate account offers unprecedented entree into the life experience of East European Jewry in a period of massive social change. more...

Price: $15.95

My Shattered Generation is the true story of a woman caught up in terrible, shocking events beyond her control. The author has written a detailed account of her life growing up in ‘the bush’ in a contented and secure family. She goes on to describe her travels and adventures, working as a farmhand, cook, barmaid and fisherman when she leaves her secluded environment. more...

Price: $5.25