Query:
From Cynthia Harrison harrison@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu 10 Jan 1996
For my women's history course, I give the students as assignment in which they are asked to select two autobiographies of women(twentieth-century) who are of different ethnic/racial backgrounds and then to write an essay describing commonalties in life experience based on gender and ways in which race/ethnicity/class/region produce differences in their lives.
I have a list of autobiographies/diaries/memoirs grouped by race, but I would appreciate suggestions in order to expand the lists. Thanks to all.
Response:
Angelou, Maya I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Getting Together in My Name
Beals, Melba Patillo Warriors Don't Cry (Pocket books, 1994)
Brown, Elaine A Taste of Power
Cary, Lorena Black Ice
Clark Echo in My Soul
Davis, Angela her autobiography
Delaney sisters Having Our Say
Fairbanks, Evelyn The Days of Rondo
Fields Lemon Swamp and Other Places
Fiol-Matta and Chamberlain, eds Women of Color and the Multicultural Curriculum (1994)
Holiday, Billie Lady Sings The Blues
Hull, Gloria T. Give Us Each Day, The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson (Norton, 1984)
Hunter-Gault, Charlayne In My Place (Vintage Books, 1993)
Hurston, Zora Neale Dustracks on the Road
Jacobs, Harriet Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Kennedy, Adrienne People Who Led to My Plays
Kytle, Elizabeth Willie Mae (U of Ga. Press
Logan, Onnie Lee Motherwit
Makeba, Miriam Makeba, My Story (Plume Printing, 1989)
Mebane, Mary Mary; Mary Wayfarer
Moody, Anne Coming of Age in Mississippi
Murray, Pauli Song in a Weary Throat; (retitled: Pauli Murray, The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest, and Poet)
Njeri, Itabari Every Good-Bye Ain't Gone
Nyabongo, Elizabeth Elizabeth of Toro, The Odyssey of an African Princess
Sadat, Jehan A Woman of Egypt (Simon & Schuster, 1987)
Shostak, Majorie,ed Nisa, The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman(Harvard U Press, 1981)
Cheng, Nien Life and Death in Shanghai(Penguin, 1988)
Hahn, Emily The Soong Sisters (Doubleday,Doran 1943)
Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki Farewell to Manzanar
Kikumura, Akemi Through Harsh Winters; The Life of a Japanese Immigrant Woman
(Chandler & Sharp Pub, Novato,CA 1981)
Kingston, Maxine Hong The Woman Warrior
Lee, Mary Paik Quiet Odyssey, A Pioneer Korean Woman in America (U of Wash.Press, 1990)
Min, Anchee Red Azalea (Pantheon, 1994)
Sone, Monica Nisei Daughter(U of Wash. Press, reprint 1989)
Waln, Nora The House of Exile(Soho Press, 1992 reprint)
Wong, Fifth Chinese Daughter
Morgan, Sally My Place (Liitle,Brown & Co, 1990)
Campbell, Maria Maria Campbell, Halfbreed
Baez, Joan Daybreak, And A Voice to Sing(1987)
Cisneros, Sandra The House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek
Citron, Conchita Conchita Citron: Memoirs of a Bullfighter (Holt,Rinehart,Winston, 1964)
Gilbert We Fed Them Cactus
Jaramillo Romance of a Little Village Girl
Menchu, Rigoberta I, Rigoberta Menchu
Mohr, Nicholasa Rituals of Survival
Ortiz Cofer, Judith Silent Dancing;, The Latin Deli
Ponce, Mary Helen Hoyt Street: Memoirs of a Chicana Girlhood (Anchor, 1993)
Ruiz and DuBois,eds Unequal Sisters
Santiago, Esmeralda When I was Puerto Rican
Adams, Jane Twenty Years at Hull House
Allen, To Do Justly
Alliluyeva, Svetlana Twenty Letters to a Friend (Harper & Row, 1967)
Allison, Dorothy Bastard out of Carolina
Anderson, Woman At Work
Austin, Mary Hunter Earth Horizon
Calof, Rachel Rachel Calof's Story: Jewish Homesteader on the Northern Plains(Indiana U Press, 1995)
Chernin, Kim In My Mother's House (Harper & Row,NY,1983)
Cohen, Jan Improbable Fiction: The Life of Mary Roberts Rinehart(U of Pittsburgh Press, 1980)
Cohen, Rose Out of the Shadows
Conway, Jill Kerr The Road From Coorain
Davis, Linda H. nward and Upward, A Biography of Katharine S. White(1987)
Dayus, Kathleen Her People(Virago)
Dillard, Annie An American Childhood
Durr, Virginia Foster Outside the Magic Circle, The Autobiography et al (Simon/Schuster 1987)
Glasgow, Ellen The Woman Within, An Autobiography (Hill & Wang 1980 reprint)
Greer, Germaine Daddy, We Hardly Knew You (Ballantine, 1989)
Hall, Mary, et al Rosa: The Story of an Immigrant
Hancock, Joy Bright Lady in the Navy, A Personal Reminiscence (Naval Inst. Press,1972)
Kelley, Florence Notes From Fifty Years
Kohut, Rebekah My Portion, An Autobiography
Laughlin, Clara E. Traveling Through Life: Being the Autobiography of Clara E. Laughlin (Houghton Mifflin, 1934)
LeGuin, A Home-Concealed Woman
Lessing, Doris Under My Skin, Vol. 1 of My Autobiography to 1949 (Harper/Collins 1994)
Lewis, Nothing to Make A Shadow
Lumpkin, Making of a Southerner
McCarthy, Mary Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, How I Grew Up(HBJ, 1987)
McGinnis,Vera Rodeo Road, My Life as a Pioneer Cowgirl(Hastings House,1974)
Marchessault, Jovette Mother of the Grass (Talonbooks BC)
Markovna, Nina Nina's Journey, A Memoir of Stalin's Russia and the Second World War (Regnery Gateway, 1989)
Mead, Margaret Blackberry Winter
Meigs, Mary Lily Briscoe (Talonbooks BC); The Box Closet (Talonbooks BC)
Mitchell, Hannah The Hard Way Up
Owens-Adair, Bethina Dr. Owens-Adair, Some of Her Life Experiences (Mann & Beach Printers, Portland,Oregon)
Radner, Gilda It's Always Something (Simon & Schuster, 1989)
Rak, Mary Kidder A Cowman's Wife, An Autobiography (Houghton,Mifflin, 1934)
Rinehart, Mary Roberts My Story (Rinehart & Co, 1938)
Rosen, Ruth, ed; The Mamie Papers: Letters of a Jewish Prostitute (U of Indiana and Feminist Press, 1977)
Rowland, Mary Canaga As Long as Life
Schneiderman, Rose All For One
Sitwell, Edith Taken Care Of; The Autobiography of Edith Sitwell (Atheneum, 1965)
Smedley, Agnes Daughter of Earth (Feminist Press)
Smith, Winnie American Daughter Gone to War
Sorenson, Where Nothing is Long Ago
Spencer, Cornelia The Exile's Daughter, A Biography of Pearl S. Buck (1944)
Wharton, May Cravath Doctor Woman of the Cumberlands, An Autobiography(1953)
Winterson, Jeannette Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
Wolf, Christa A Model Childhood
Woodward, Kathleen Jipping Street (Virago)
Yezierska, Anzia Breadgivers (Persea Books-Doubleday, NY, 1925)
Brave Bird, Mary Ohitika Woman
Crow Dog, Mary Lakota Woman
Hall, Janet Campbell Bloodlines
Linderman, Frank B Pretty Shield: A Medicine Woman of the Crows.
Mankiller, Wilma Mankiller, A Chief and Her People: An Autobiography by the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation (St. Martin's Press, 1993)
Mourning Dove Mourning Dove: A Salishan Autobiography
St. Pierre, Mark Madonna Swan: A Lakota Woman's Story
Sekaquaptewa, Me and Mine
Shaw, Anna Moore A Pima Past
Stewart, A Voice in Her Tribe
Thompson, Lucy To the American Indian: Reminiscences of a Yurok Woman (Berkeley, Heyday Books, 1991 reprint)
Walters, Annalee Talking Indian
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