Top 100 Women in History: Annie’s List

Feministe has a post asking for readers’ Top 100 Women in History.  I started to comment, then gave up realizing I’d take over the blog if I kept going—plus it’s too much trouble doing hyperlinks in comment fields. But here, I can go on and on and on……(and yes, it’s very literary-centered, but that’s my thing, and it’s not in any logical order):

 

 

·         Mary McCarthy (of the flying diaphragm scene in The Group, and one of the New York intellectuals)

 

·         Tillie Olsen (writer—“I Stand Here Ironing” and Silences— and activist)

 

·         Rebecca Harding Davis (working class writer of haunting “Life in the Iron Mills”)

 

·         Lucille Clifton (who loves her hips)

 

·         Margaret Fuller (author of Woman in the 19th Century)

 

·         Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (of course)

 

·         Judy Syfers (author of “Why I Want a Wife”)

 

·         Sojourner Truth (“Ain’t I A Woman?”)

 

·         Louisa May Alcott (not just of Little Women fame, she supported her entire family for decades)

 

·         Emma Goldman (I still think of Maureen Stapleton playing her in the film Reds)

 

·         Zitkala-Sa (author of The School Days of an Indian Girl)

 

·         Sui Sin Far (author of Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian)

 

·         Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Women)

 

·         Leslie Marmon Silko (author of Ceremony)

 

·         Georgia O’Keefe (awesome artist)

 

·         Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein (literary and social couple of 1920s Paris)

 

·         Kate Chopin (her story “The Storm” was turn of the 20^th century soft porn, and beautifully written; her novel The Awakening is a feminist masterpiece)

 

·         Alice Walker (for “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens” especially)

 

·         Charlotte Perkins Gilman (“The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Herland” are both feminist classics)

 

·         Adrienne Rich (“Diving into the Wreck” and her collection of essays “Of Lies, Secrets and Silences”)

 

 

I’ll continue another day….I’ve barely begun with this list!