A New York Times Book Review Editorsâ Choice
A Publishers Weekly and New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by The Millions and Literary Hub
âThoroughly absorbing.⌠A beautiful synthesis of diverse womenâs experiences, combining history with memoir and a call to action.â âJill Watts, New York Times Book Review
An award-winning historian shows how girls who found self-understanding in the natural world became women who changed America.
Harriet Tubman, forced to labor outdoors on a Maryland plantation, learned from the land a terrain for escape. Louisa May Alcott ran wild, eluding gendered expectations in New England. The Indigenous womenâs basketball team from Fort Shaw, Montana, recaptured a sense of pride in physical prowess as they trounced the white teams of the 1904 Worldâs Fair. Celebrating women like these who acted on their confidence outdoors, Wild Girls brings new context to misunderstood icons like Sacagawea and Pocahontas, and to underappreciated figures like Native American activist writer ZitkĂĄla-Ĺ ĂĄ, also known as Gertrude Bonnin, farmworkersâ champion Dolores Huerta, and labor and Civil Rights organizer Grace Lee Boggs.
This beautiful, meditative work of history puts girls of all racesâand the landscapes they lovedâat center stage and reveals the impact of the outdoors on womenâs independence, resourcefulness, and vision. For these trailblazing women of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, navigating the woods, following the stars, playing sports, and taking to the streets in peaceful protest were not only joyful pursuits, but also techniques to resist assimilation, racism, and sexism. Lyrically written and full of archival discoveries, Wild Girls evokes landscapes as richly as the girls who roamed in themâand argues for equal access to outdoor spaces for young women of every race and class today.
A New York Times Book Review Editorsâ Choice
A Publishers Weekly and New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by The Millions and Literary Hub
âThoroughly absorbing.⌠A beautiful synthesis of diverse womenâs experiences, combining history with memoir and a call to action.â âJill Watts, New York Times Book Review
An award-winning historian shows how girls who found self-understanding in the natural world became women who changed America.
Harriet Tubman, forced to labor outdoors on a Maryland plantation, learned from the land a terrain for escape. Louisa May Alcott ran wild, eluding gendered expectations in New England. The Indigenous womenâs basketball team from Fort Shaw, Montana, recaptured a sense of pride in physical prowess as they trounced the white teams of the 1904 Worldâs Fair. Celebrating women like these who acted on their confidence outdoors, Wild Girls brings new context to misunderstood icons like Sacagawea and Pocahontas, and to underappreciated figures like Native American activist writer ZitkĂĄla-Ĺ ĂĄ, also known as Gertrude Bonnin, farmworkersâ champion Dolores Huerta, and labor and Civil Rights organizer Grace Lee Boggs.
This beautiful, meditative work of history puts girls of all racesâand the landscapes they lovedâat center stage and reveals the impact of the outdoors on womenâs independence, resourcefulness, and vision. For these trailblazing women of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, navigating the woods, following the stars, playing sports, and taking to the streets in peaceful protest were not only joyful pursuits, but also techniques to resist assimilation, racism, and sexism. Lyrically written and full of archival discoveries, Wild Girls evokes landscapes as richly as the girls who roamed in themâand argues for equal access to outdoor spaces for young women of every race and class today.