Scribbling Women. True Tales from Astonishing Lives by Marthe Jocelyn
Have you ever wondered about the people who have gone before you and have paved the way to make your life easier?
Many women in the world are not taught to read and write and throughout time this remains true. Women and girls are undervalued. Throughout history women who wrote were told they had nothing important to say and were encouraged to stop scribbling. So Marthe Jocelyn was curious about scribbling women and started looking into resources to find the women who journaled, wrote letters and therefore described their experiences. Jocelyn narrowed this list from thousands of women to the eleven she presents in her book, Scribbling Women.
The women Jocelyn included in her book are not well known and are not famous. In fact I had only heard of three of the women, Nellie Bly, Dang Thuy Tram and Doris Pilkington Garimara. I couldn't remember much of anything about Nellie but I knew Dang Thuy Tram well because I read a copy of her journals that were in her book "Last Night I Dreamed of Peace". I read this book aloud to my 4th hour class last year so I was happy to see her represented in the book. Doris Pilkington Garimara wrote Rabbit Proof Fence and I also read this book aloud to one of my classes (years ago) and then we watched the film. Each of short biography of these Scribbling Women includes a photo and their personal quotes.
Learning about these amazing women, who maybe didn't feel so special during the time they lived, was wonderful. These are the women who have paved the way because they didn't follow the norms of the day, they pushed the limits and chose to live the way they wanted.
