Woman Who Faced Amazing Challenges & Succeeded

March 29 - Today's post contributed by Alyson Beecher

Woman Who Faced Amazing Challenges & Succeeded

by Alyson Beecher

If you were asked to name a woman in history who made a significant contribution and who also had a disability of some type, who would you name? Most people would probably name Helen Keller. However, I was curious about other women who had made or were making a difference and who also had some form of a disability. So, off to Google I went.

My simple search produced some familiar names and some names that were new to me. Helen Keller was obviously on the list but so was Harriet Tubman, and Frida Kahlo. Each of these women have numerous biographies written about them in both picture book and long-form. The famous photographer, Dorothea Lange is well known for her photography but lesser known for the limp she grew up with as a result of polio when she was a child. Wilma Mankiller, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, has a chapter in a picture book celebrating famous woman and her work with the Cherokee Nation, but did you know she also served in this position while having a rare form of muscular dystrophy? Really, just a chapter in a picture book?

However, I learned about some other woman who had made notable contributions to their communities and countries and yet, little were written about them.  Jhamak Ghimire who has severe cerebral palsy and considered the “Helen Keller of Nepal” has nothing written about her in the United States, except for her own work of poetry. Judy Neumann, and Harilyn Rousso have had significant careers and lives advocating for individuals with disabilities and yet despite their life's work would not be easily recognized by most teachers and children.

After serving on the Schneider Family Book Award Jury (a children’s and young adult book award committee of the American Library Association) for the past few years, I have read a lot of books featuring individuals with special needs. However, in the category for young children, with the exception of books about Helen Keller, there were no books portraying the lives of any of these other amazing woman and the work that they have done while also living with additional challenges. Do we have a book gap? I would certainly say yes.

Though this is not a comprehensive list by any means, I would like to highlight the lives of just a few of the incredible woman who embody the spirit and essence that surrounds Women’s History Month and who are also powerful role models for our young readers who may be empowered to dream beyond their special needs because of these amazing women.

Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom by Carole Boston Weatherford; Illustrated by Kadir Nelson

Despite what I had read on Harriet Tubman in the past, it had primarily focused on her leadership and active role in assisting slaves to escape to freedom. Somehow, I had missed the fact that Tubman suffered from epilepsy along with severe headaches and narcolepsy as a result of a head injury she suffered when she was young at the hands of another slave’s overseer.

Frida by Jonah Winter; Illustrated by Ana Juan

Viva Frida by Yuyi Morales 

One of the things that have always struck me is how Frida Kahlo was able to utilize her pain and life experiences to produce so many amazing pieces of art. As a child, she contracted polio and was left with a limp, then at 18 she was in a serious bus accident, which left her in chronic pain. Kahlo lived a colorful live with her marriage to artist Diego Rivera and her political activism.

Dorothea Lange by Mike Venezia

As a child, Dorothea Lange contracted polio which left her with a limp due to a weakened right leg and foot. However, she did not let this or later health issues impede her work as a photographer and publisher. It was her goal to use her photography to bring attention to injustices, which she hoped would result in a change of action in people. Her depression era photography of rural hardship became her best known work.

Amelia to Zora: Twenty-six Women Who Changed the World by Cynthia Chin-Lee; Illustrated by Megan Halsey, Sean Addy 

Photo of Wilma Mankiller taken at the 2001 Cherokee National Holiday. Photo by Phil Konstantin

Wilma Mankiller was a lifetime activist and advocate for the rights of Native Americans and women. In 1985, she became the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation During her term as Principal Chief, she worked to improve health care, education and government for native americans. After a nearly fatal car crash, Mankiller was diagnosed with a form of muscular dystrophy.

Harilyn Rousso

Harilyn Rousso is not only a disability rights activist but also an activist for the rights of women with disabilities. Highly educated, Rousso has utilized her personal experiences, education, and passions to establish a number of organizations to address issues of gender and disability.

Judith Heumann, Photo from U.S. State Department

As a toddler, Judy Heumann developed polio which left her needing to use a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Heumann has spent her life advocating for the rights of those with disabilities. After college, she fought against New York State in court to be granted the right teach elementary school as an individual in a wheelchair. She later served as the Assistant Secretary of Special Education during the Clinton Administration. Currently, she works as an International Disability Rights Special Advisor advocating human rights legislation for children and adults with special needs.

"Jhamakawarded" by Madan Puraskar org . Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jhamakawarded.jpg#/media/File:Jhamakawarded.jpg

Though Jhamak Ghimire may not be able to speak or use her hands due to cerebral palsy, she has still managed to write poetry and be recognized in her native land of Nepal as an award winning poet.

Helen’s Big World: The Life of Helen Keller by Doreen Rappaport; Illustrated by Matt Tavares

Of course, I couldn’t leave out Helen Keller. Likely of the most recognized influential women who also happened to have a disability, Keller showed that despite being both blind and deaf that you can learn and you can make a difference.

What strikes me about each of these women is how hard they must have worked. Each one of these women shows us what is possible despite our personal limitations. When I think of the headaches that Harriet Tubman experienced or the chronic pain of Frida Kahlo, I am in awe. Pain is hard and yet, neither of these women allowed it to stop them from accomplishing what they were meant to do.

Mankiller, Heumann, and Rousso dedicated their lives to advocating for others. When I look at the accomplishments of these women, I almost feel like an underachiever.  They have not allowed what might be seen by others as limitations to limit them.

Lange, Kahlo, and Ghimire have used their experiences to enhance their artistic expression. Ghimire is particularly inspiring in that her own country as well as her body would have left her without a voice and yet through her writing she has found that voice.

Next time, I find myself thinking I am unable to do something, I need to remind myself how much each of these women have contributed to their communities and even the world by what they were able to accomplish while facing incredible challenges.


Alyson Beecher is an educator, book geek and literacy advocate with over 20 years of experience in education.  Currently, she is the K-8 Literacy Specialist for the Pasadena Unified School District in Pasadena, CA.  Alyson has served as the Chair of the ALA 2015 Schneider Family Book Award Jury and was an Elementary/Middle Grade Nonfiction second round judge for the CYBILS. She can be found on twitter @alybee930 or through her blog www.kidlitfrenzy.com

Miss Emily - Our Laughing Goddess of Plenty

March 26 - Today's post contributed by Burleigh Mutén

Miss Emily – Our Laughing Goddess of Plenty

©2014  Burleigh Mutén

Emily Dickinson loved children.

This is one of the first facts

 I tell the five-year-olds I teach

when we study Dickinson.

“Not only did Emily Dickinson

grow up in Amherst, just like you,”

I tell them,  “She loved nature,

just like you, and  

she liked to write about it. 

She wrote many poems about bees

and flowers, the wind,

 birds, clouds at sunset,

the color of the hills at sunrise.

A lot of people all over the world

know about Emily Dickinson

and her poems,” I say,

“but most people don’t know

that she loved children.”

“Did she have any children?” someone asks.

I explain about the lucky children

who lived next door –-

her niece and nephews

and the children of the neighborhood

who loved to play in her yard

with hope that she might add  

a whimsical contribution to their fun.

Sometimes a sweet treat.

I ask the children in my class

if they know a grown-up who

knows how to talk to children,

which is my way of saying,

Do you know anyone

who really respects you,

someone who is genuinely interested

in you and your thoughts,

someone who knows  how

to join your play as an equal

for those precious moments

when you pretend together?            

Their hands shoot up eagerly.

Sometimes someone

names a special aunt.

The perfect response.

One of Dickinson’s young neighbors,

MacGregor Jenkins, grew up and wrote

for Harpers and The Atlantic Monthly.

He also wrote a memoir about

his young life on Main Street, Amherst called

EMILY DICKINSON, FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR

in which he describes the poet as

 “our laughing goddess of plenty.”

“It is impossible to imagine a personality

that would appeal to children

more than Miss Emily’s,”

wrote Jenkins. “One moment her eyes

were dancing with fun, filling

our hearts with a very new

and very wonderful feeling.

She was a joyous person.”

©Matt Phelan

The Teacher and Writer Within Me

instantly leapt into a lively conversation.

“A mischievous,

playful Miss Emily

is the way

to introduce young children

to Dickinson,” said the Teacher.

“You can show youngsters,”

said the Writer,

“that Emily Dickinson didn’t

totally sequester herself

in her home. She, in fact,

never stopped interacting

with the children she loved.”

It’s well documented that Dickinson

wrote many notes to the children.

We also know from her letters and poems

that she enjoyed watching the circus

parade past her home.

“The plot develops!” cried the Writer Within.

I started the story, writing in prose.

“But you love verse novels,” insisted the Writer.

“And so do young readers,” said the Teacher.

“You’re a poet,” whispered Miss Emily

as I sat at the keyboard. “Enjoy yourself!

Have a heyday with lineation!

Play with alliteration!”

“Ooh,” said the Writer and the Teacher together.

So I did!

I played with all aspects

of writing free verse

just as I’m doing right now.

MISS EMILY generously offered me

the chance to go “public like a frog”

with the secret I’d kept

since I was a teen: I am poet.

I was walking ‘round the reservoir

near my home one day when the first lines

of the book came into my head.

©Matt Phelan

Van Amburgh & Company’s  Great Golden Menagerie

and  Frost’s Roman Circus and Royal Coliseum

came to Amherst in June 1877.

The posters announced 175 horses,

56 wagons, five of the world’s champion riders,

bareback somersaulting equestrians,

the largest elephant in the world,

and a two-horned rhinoceros.

©Matt Phelan

It was fun researching

and writing MISS EMILY,

but it was not easy writing

a note to the children

which fit the story

but in actuality were my words --

not Dickinson’s.

I held my breath after submitting

the manuscript to a Dickinson scholar

and sighed when she returned it

with compliments.

  

As a poet Emily Dickinson was true

to her authentic voice

as a writer and person.

She was not fond of convention.

In any realm of her life.

As an educator,

I believe it’s vital for a child

to explore and find

her own writer’s voice.

.

Thanks to Miss Emily,

I claimed my own voice as a poet.

May MISS EMILY’s young readers

do the same!

Burleigh Mutén is the author of five children’s books. She is a kindergarten teacher in Amherst, MA and a member of the Emily Dickinson International Society. She has led writing workshops for older children throughout New England, including workshops focused on Dickinson and her work in which young authors actually write in the houses of the Emily Dickinson Museum.

No Coward Soul

March 8 - Today's post contributed by Catherine Reef

Portrait of Emily Brontë
by her brother Branwell Brontë.

No Coward Soul

In 1842, when Emily Brontë was twenty-four and studying at a Brussels pensionnat, her teacher struggled to make sense of her bold, singular mind. Upon reading her highly original essays (written in French, a language in which Brontë had recently and rapidly gained facility), Constantin Heger could only conclude, "She should have been born a man." A man with her gifts could have been "a great navigator," Heger speculated. "Her powerful reason would have deduced new spheres of discovery." Yet it was useless to think of what might have been. Logic and rational argument were manly attributes. Brilliance in a woman was wasted.

Certainly, having brains put a young woman at a disadvantage in the marriage market. "The love of a wife for her husband is to be associated with reverence, submission, deference," counseled The Wife and Mother, a manual published in 1841. The master of the household wanted a spouse who would yield to his decisions "with grace and cheerfulness," not one who would second-guess him.

Of course, with her total indifference to fashion, blunt manner in company, natural reclusiveness, and lack of money, Emily Brontë was unlikely to attract a husband anyway. But then she never expressed a wish to have one. She was wedded to the bleak landscape surrounding Haworth, the noxious village in northern England that had been her home since early childhood. The wind that swept the surrounding moorland fueled her creativity as no human bond ever could. In singleness she thrived.

In this, too, Emily Brontë was unusual. Almost without exception, middle-class girls in Victorian England sought marriage. Matrimony gave a woman the security of a home and a place in society, even if it robbed her of legal status. Her property and future inheritance became her spouse's; he had custody of their children; and, before 1857, it was all but impossible for her to obtain a divorce, however heinous the treatment she might have received. The Wife and Mother advised her to view her husband's misconduct "rather as an indication of thoughtlessness than of settled unkindness"; she was to "look upon it rather as an error than a crime." And the preferred way to combat a husband's moral lapses? Setting an example: "Endeavouring, by gentle influence, to lead such a course of moral discipline as will be likely to eradicate evil."  Also, we must not forget that even in the happiest unions, a wife faced the risks and demands of constant childbearing.

Any one of us might prefer staying single to choosing such a fate, but women today have many more options. A single woman without an income needed to work in Brontë's time (as in our own); unfortunately for her, the only profession open to a respectable female in the Victorian period was teaching.  She could be hired as an instructor in a school for girls or as a governess in a private home, but to accept either position was to toil for long hours at low wages and to step down socially. After all, no true lady worked for money.

Like her sisters, Charlotte and Anne, Emily Brontë tried teaching, and, like them, she hated it. For a few months in 1838 and 1839, Emily was employed at Miss Patchett's School, Halifax. She was as ill-suited to the school's dulling routine as she was to marriage. She made one friend in Halifax, the school's dog. Torn from the home and wild country that she loved, she grew depressed. "I fear she will never stand it," said Charlotte, who was only somewhat better than Emily at conforming to society's expectations. Emily's depression manifested itself as physical illness, and she was back in Haworth before the second term ended.

The only life to which Emily was suited--the only one that challenged her mind and freed her fancy--was that of a writer, and writing was considered the province of men. About women authors the critic George Henry Lewes scoffed, "Are there no stockings to darn, no purses to make, no braces to embroider?" Of course, there were women of letters, even successful ones like Frances Trollope and Maria Edgeworth, and the author of Female Writers (1842) argued that the world of literature held a place for women: "A full-voiced choir would not be considered complete without some female voices." Still, many Victorians agreed with those who compared literary women to rickety children and "monstrosities of nature."

 George Henry Lewes mocked women writers in 1850,
 yet four years later he was living with Mary Ann Evans  (the novelist George Eliot).

Wanting to be judged as the equals of male writers--in other words, on the basis of their work alone, Emily and her sisters chose masculine pseudonyms when they submitted their collected poems for publication in 1846, becoming Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Emily (Ellis) was the most gifted poet of the three. In verse she praised imagination, and in so doing declared herself a child of the Romantics:

Oh, my true friend! I am not lone,

While thou canst speak with such a tone...

Through poetry she pondered the mutability of life; she addresses the stars, her nighttime companions; and she asserted her individuality. "No coward soul is mine," she proclaimed in one valiant poem.

Heedless of "the growling thunder, and the great drops that began to plash around her," Catherine Earnshaw calls out for Heathcliff. This illustration is from an edition of
Wuthering Heights published in the early twentieth century.

With the appearance of Wuthering Heights, in 1847, Emily Brontë moved beyond comparison with other writers, male or female, and into the realm of genius. Her groundbreaking novel perplexed readers when it was written, and it remains enigmatic today. Is it a story of love or a saga of revenge? Is Brontë's hero, Heathcliff, a man scarred by his past or an emotional force as strong as a moorland storm? Is the love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw--the powerful love that sets the plot in motion--a force for good or ill? "I am Heathcliff!" Catherine cries; whatever can she mean? These are questions to ponder rather than answer. Brontë's characters have so much depth and her plot possesses so many levels that Wuthering Heights resists neat conclusions. It's as impossible to sum up as a person we have come to know well.

The wonder is that it was written by a woman in her twenties who spent most of her life in her father's house in a remote English village, a woman who never knew a man's love, who so shunned the world that if she sketched herself she did so from the back, with her face turned away. A brilliant woman, an intrepid navigator of the heart and stars, no coward soul was she.

Catherine Reef

Editor's Note:
Catherine Reef's book, The Bronte Sisters: The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily and Anne was published by Clarion in 2012.  Its awards include: 

• Junior Library Guild Selection
• Booklist, *starred review*
• Kirkus, *starred review*
• Publishers Weekly, *starred review*
• One of Kirkus's "Best Teen Books of 2012"

Emily and Carlo by Marty Rhodes Figley

Women's History Month Giveaway:  If you'd like to win a prize pack with Emily and Carlo and five brand-new Women's History Month picture books, please leave a comment below or on any post this month!  You will get one entry for each comment you leave this month on Kidlit Celebrates Women's History Month.  The winner will be drawn on April 1, after all comments are submitted.   


March 5 - Today's post provided by Marty Rhodes Figley

The theme of National Women’s History Month 2012, Women’s Education – Women’s Empowerment, embodies much of what my new picture book Emily and Carlo means to me. Education, Empowerment . . . and Serendipity, because this book might not have happened if:

1. My husband’s aunt and uncle hadn’t owned a 150-pound Newfoundland named Londerry that I met years before when I was wearing white. After an ecstatic greeting from this huge dog, my dress was covered with long dog hairs and drool.
2. I hadn’t gone back to school to finish my undergraduate degree at Mount Holyoke College.





Mount Holyoke College

Eleven years ago, during an evening Shakespeare class at my local junior college, the professor mentioned that three Seven Sister schools, Mount Holyoke, Smith and Wellesley colleges, offered excellent programs for nontraditional students. I was experiencing a lull in my publishing career, so I was tempted. When I told my husband about it, he graciously encouraged me to follow my dream, even though we lived in Northern Virginia and these schools were in New England. Our kids were grown, we were between dogs, and he knew I had always regretted not finishing college. I enrolled at Mount Holyoke College—Emily Dickinson’s alma mater. I lived in a dorm on campus with traditional students for the next two years and graduated with a degree in American Studies at age 55. It was an empowering experience.


In my second year, I couldn’t resist taking a course offered by the college at the Emily Dickinson Homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Dickinson Homestead

I already knew that Emily Dickinson (1830-86) was considered one of our finest, yet most enigmatic poets. She never married and spent most of her life living at the family home in Amherst. Later in her life the townspeople referred to her as “The Queen Recluse” and “The Myth.” I envisioned Emily as a wispy, ethereal, white-clad genius, untouched by the corporeal elements of life, privately committing to paper profound, passionate lyrical poetry about nature, love, pain, and immortality.

Emily Dickinson at seventeen

On the first day of the Emily Dickinson class our professor—extraordinary teacher and Dickinson scholar, Martha Ackmann, took us on a walking tour of the town. She mentioned that Emily’s dog, Carlo, a Newfoundland, was her constant companion for sixteen years. I stopped in my tracks and said, “A Newfoundland?” I remembered Londerry, his hair, his drool, his friendliness . . . his size. My perception of the poet changed instantly.

Londerry - in all his enormous glory

Edward Dickinson gave Carlo to Emily sometime during the winter months of 1849-50. His motive may have been to provide his daughter protection, companionship, or both. Emily’s younger sister, Lavinia, was away at school and her brother, Austin, was immersed in his college life. Emily wrote to a friend, “I am all alone.”


Emily’s intensity was sometimes too much for her friends. It exhausted them and many times drove them away. Her letters are showcases of her wit, her virtuosity with prose and poetry, and her constant demands for attention and reassurance. Loneliness underlies her words. Emily’s literary mentor, Thomas Higginson, described his first meeting with her. “I never was with anyone who drained my nerve power so much. Without touching her, she drew from me. I am glad not to live near her.”


Carlo provided a friendship for Emily that was constant and unconditional. Having a dog that probably weighed well over one hundred pounds to accompany her, surely gave shy Emily the confidence to venture out to visit friends and explore the countryside.

Amherst Main Street (Dickinson Homestead in background on left)

A neighbor recalled, “Her companion out of doors was a large Newfoundland named Carlo.” She wrote about him in her poems and letters. To Emily a dog was “a noble work of art.”


Her Newfoundland was her loving confident and companion. In a letter to Higginson she wrote, “They [dogs] are better than Being—because they know—but do not tell— . . ..” Emily called Carlo her “shaggy ally.” She referred affectionately to his “brown kisses.”


Emily grieved acutely when she lost Carlo. After his death, she wrote Higginson telling him she missed her dog. Six months later she wrote about her dog again, “ . . . I wish for Carlo.” Emily stayed closer to home after her beloved dog died. She never owned another.


Emily Dickinson is sometimes difficult for children to understand; her love of her dog is not. I wanted to write a book that showed the poet in a more earthy light. She was a person who loved a very large, messy, hairy dog for sixteen years. He was her playmate, friend, guide, and protector. Emily’s dresses probably carried evidence of this special relationship most of the time.


A friend reminisced that as a little girl, she went walking with the poet “while her huge dog stalked solemnly beside them.” Emily confided to her young companion, “Gracie, do you know that I believe that the first to come and greet me when I got to heaven will be this dear, faithful old friend Carlo?”


It was a privilege to write about Emily and her dog, and to share their story with young readers. Here’s to Education, Empowerment, and last, but not least, Serendipity.


And, I might add, dogs, poetry, and love.

from Emily and Carlo

Editor's Note:

"Marty Rhodes Figley was born in Joplin, Missouri, and grew up in Springfield, Missouri. Her parents came from Hannibal, Missouri, where she spent much of her childhood visiting. She now lives in the Washington, D. C. area.

She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in American Studies (cum laude). Marty is the author of seventeen books and numerous magazine articles."

Copyright Marty Rhodes Figley