princess/queen

I think it's interesting how there is a very short list of women rulers (of any country, any time period) that we ever hear about. If you've spent time around my apartment and have needed to measure something, you may have had occasion to borrow my Great Women Rulers ruler (No, this is not a joke. When you are a person like me, you don't even need to find these things for yourself after a (very short) while. People find them and give them to you.). Sure, it lists Queen Elisabeth I, Nefertiti, Catherine the Great, and Amina. I'd never heard of her either, and, quite frankly, there's not a ton of information available. But she was a Nigerian princess who may or may not have later become a queen, but who many seem to agree expanded her kingdom and was a good ruler. (Women in the military also being something we don't much like to talk about, unless of course they died young and tragically, a la Joan of Arc). And so, while I'd like to apologize to her for not knowing her better, Amina Sukhera is March 22's women of the day.

doctor

Somebody had to be the first woman doctor in the U.S., but I for one am glad it was somebody as generally awesome as Elizabeth Blackwell, March 21's woman of the day. She was active in the anti-slavery movement, taught herself a lot about medicine, and went to Geneva College where she graduated first in her class. Once she had her degree, though, she was banned from practicing in most hospitals in the U.S. (you know, because she was a woman).

Sooo...she went to Paris, worked as a doctor, lost an eye, got a glass one, came back to New York, founded a hospital, trained women to be Civil War nurses (for the Union), went to England, got another medical degree, co-founded a women's medical college in London with Florence Nightingale, and...yeah. Totally a bad idea to let women into the medical profession! Look at all those things she did! Ugh. She was a suffragist, too.

strong voice

Hrotsvitha! A German abbess (whose name means "strong voice") who wrote poetry and plays is more than enough to get me excited about the Middle Ages. Why don't they ever teach you the fun stuff when you're younger? I had to wait for Theatre 401 to get to her. Plus she wrote about ladies. Oh, and some scholars think she was the first playwright in Western culture since antiquity. Yes. March 20.

It must be nice to have a long name

And on March 19th, we have the pleasure of meeting Peruvian educator and poet Lucila de María del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga, better known by her pseudonym, Gabriela Mistral. Poetry in translation is a damn difficult thing. Nonetheless, I'd like to recommend the following:

To See Him Again 

Never, never again?
Not on nights filled with quivering stars,
or during dawn's maiden brightness
or afternoons of sacrifice?

Or at the edge of a pale path
that encircles the farmlands,
or upon the rim of a trembling fountain,
whitened by a shimmering moon?

Or beneath the forest's
luxuriant, raveled tresses
where, calling his name,
I was overtaken by the night?
Not in the grotto that returns
the echo of my cry?

Oh no. To see him again --
it would not matter where --
in heaven's deadwater
or inside the boiling vortex,
under serene moons or in bloodless fright!

To be with him...
every springtime and winter,
united in one anguished knot
around his bloody neck!

And she was keen on education reform! And the first Latin American person to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1945)! Enthusiasm, please and thank you.

how we in Balkans kill rats

On March 18 I took a tip from Anna, one of the pirate store employees, and looked into Marina Abramović. She seems wonderfully strange. A contemporary Yugoslavian-Serbian performance artist based in New York, she's also at the MOMA. In New York. Right now. East coasters, what are you waiting for? She does things like this:

and this:

I am so bummed it will be over by the time I get to that coast! Please go see it for me & tell me all about it!

the Sea Queen

March 17th introduces us to Gráinne Ní Mháille and no, I can't pronounce it either (Psst! Irish folks! Help us out! Forvo is waiting!) – lucky for all of us English speakers, she was also referred to as Grace O'Malley. Whew. Also known as "The Sea Queen of Connaught," she was basically a pirate. Well, I'm kind of enraptured with that. There's a lot of fact-bleeding-into-fiction-into-legend with her, but she was definitely a real women and a real pirate. That's enough for me.

RAWA

I'm so far behind on the updates for this that if I wrote a short story about it, the first line would be "My life is a sham." That being said, I've decided to finish up for the sake of tidy housekeeping. Facebook friends will have been kept up to date with the simpler, crisper, but ultimately less rewarding woman of the day one-liners. For those who've been waiting, I apologize and promise to do better next year. In the meantime, March 16: Meena Keshwar Kamal.

Something I've enjoyed about this project all along is that I told myself I had to do some research, and not just spend a month with the women already inside my head. Meena Keshwar Kamal is one of my favorite encounters, and I'm shocked and ashamed I'd never heard of her before (Damn you, western-slated media/history!). She founded the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) in 1977, whose purpose was to promote equality and education for women. Wow. Sadly and unsurprisingly, Meena was assassinated at age thirty. 

 In all our talk about Afghanistan in the press, in all the time before and since we've invaded, why is no one talking about this – still active – group? Maybe because they're not super keen on our presence there.