Reading: Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation

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As the semester winds toward the holiday season more time for reading opens up and I love finding new books to read – both fiction and non. My Thanksgiving read this week was Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation by Harvard professor Tiya Miles.

In this short book, she traces the way playing in the outdoors shaped the lives of several American activist women from Harriet Tubman to Louisa May Alcott to Native American writer Zitkála-ŠáNative/Gertrude Bonnin to Dolores Huerta. It added female names to my list of women to be remembered and reminded to get outside this holiday season and play in the dirt.

From the publisher…

Named a Best Nonfiction Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly

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 women’s basketball team from Fort Shaw, Montana, recaptured a sense of pride in physical prowess as they trounced the white teams of the 1904 World’s 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 Zitkála-Šá, also known as Gertrude Bonnin, farmworkers’ champion Dolores Huerta, and labor and Civil Rights organizer Grace Lee Boggs.

This beautiful, meditative work of history puts girls of all races—and the landscapes they loved—at center stage and reveals the impact of the outdoors on women’s 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 them—and argues for equal access to outdoor spaces for young women of every race and class today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tiya Miles is the Michael Garvey Professor of History at Harvard University, the author of five prize-winning works on the history of slavery and early American race relations, and a 2011 MacArthur Fellowship recipient. She was the founder and director of the Michigan-based ECO Girls program, and she is the author of the National Book Award–winning, New York Times best-selling All That She Carried. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Sunset Cliffs, San Diego Selfie via Instagram

Sunset Cliffs, San Diego Selfie via Instagram

We took an afternoon to drive around the San Diego coast during @sdwhocon a few weekends ago.

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At the beach…via Instagram

At the beach…

At the beach...via Instagram

Took a much-needed getaway to drive out to Malibu today and breathe the ocean air.

Found an empty spot to sit, stare, and photograph.

Munched on a takeaway lunch from Neptune’s Net, which is doing business via drive thru. I got my favorite, scallops, so all was right with the world. 😄

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Egret at Cal Poly Pomona via Instagram

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Egret at Cal Poly Pomona

Egret

One of the loveliest things about the campus at Cal Poly Pomona is the duck pond that is home to not only ducks and turtles but this beautiful creature who flies majestically around campus – or sometimes sits so nice and still along the pathway from my parking lot to my office. He or she creates a peaceful start to each new day.

Our Christmas Poinsettia via Instagram

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Our Christmas Poinsettia

Our Christmas Poinsettia via Instagram

This is a #poinsettia from last Christmas and I’ve has done a great job of shepherding it through the year. It just started turning red just in time for #christmas.

I think the secret is to not over water it during the summer months. It is a southwestern plant and used to dry spells until the winter rains come.



* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

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Full Moon Over Foz

Full Moon Over Foz via Instagram

A lovely moon rises over Foz, Porto, Portugal during The Screenwriting Research Network Conference in September.



* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!

Working on my next book! via Instagram

Working on my next book!

Working on my next book! via Instagram

Now that the heat wave has passed — for now — I took to my outdoors “desk” to work my on Fact Checking Hollywood book coming next year.

My schedule seems to include at least one book a year, along with several articles, so taking some sustained, dedicated time to write is always good — especially when it so nice outdoors!

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Last night’s CJ (Citizen Jane) After Dark included short horror films, s’mores over the fire and great local craft beer via Instagram