WOMEN SPEAK OF THEIR LIVES: TWENTIETH-CENTURY AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
A Short List of References
Compiled by Sheridan Harvey
Reference Specialist in Women's Studies
Humanities and Social Sciences Division
March 1993
CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION
Angelou, Maya.
I know why the caged bird sings. -- New York : Random
House, [1970]. -- 281 p. PS3551.N464 Z466 1970
This poet, playwright, and political activist
describes her childhood, growing up poor and Black in
Depression Arkansas.
Dillard, Annie.
An American childhood. -- New York : Harper & Row,
c1987. -- 255 p. PS3554.I398 Z464 1987
Detailed reminiscence of intellectual development
in Pittsburgh in the 1940s.
Beauvoir, Simone de.
Memoirs of a dutiful daughter. -- Cleveland : World
Pub. Co., [1959]. -- 382 p. PQ603.E362 Z523
Translated from the French.
Passage from a Parisian bourgeois family to the
Sorbonne and Sartre.
Cary, Lorene.
Black ice. -- New York : Knopf : Distributed by
Random House, 1991. -- 237 p. F44.C7 C35 1991
Experiences of an African American at an elite New
England prep school.
POLITICS AND WAR
Brittain, Vera.
Testament of youth : an autobiographical study of the
years 1900-1925. -- New York : Penguin Books, 1989.
-- 661 p. PR6003.R385 Z479 1989
Originally published in London in 1933.
Records the horrors of nursing during World War I
in England, experiences that led her to feminism and
pacifism.
Cheng, Nien.
Life and death in Shanghai. -- New York : Grove
Press, 1987. -- 547 p. DS778.7.C445 1987
Writes of years of suffering at the hands of the
Chinese Red Guards.
Ginzburg, Evgeniia Semenovna.
Journey into the whirlwind. -- New York : Harcourt,
Brace & World, [1967]. -- 418 p. DK268.3.G513
Translated from the Russian.
A university teacher was sent to Stalin's prison
camps.
Menchu, Rigoberta.
I, Rigoberta Menchu : an Indian woman in Guatemala /
translated by Ann Wright. -- London : Verso, c1984. -
- 251 p. F1465.2.Q5 M3813 1984
This twenty-three year old daughter of the Quich‚
tribe recounts years of civil war in Guatemala.
MIDLIFE AND AGING
Lindberg, Anne Morrow.
Gift from the sea. -- New York : Pantheon, 1955. --
127 p. BD435.L52
A study of the interwoven strands of a life as
writer, wife, and mother.
Sarton, May.
Journal of a solitude. -- New York : Norton, [1973].
-- 208 p. PS3537.A832 Z4667 1973
Searching for quiet in a society that rarely values
it.
ANTHOLOGY
Written by herself : autobiographies of American women
: an anthology / edited and with an introduction by
Jill Ker Conway. -- New York : Vintage Books, 1992.
-- 672 p. PS647.W6 W75 1992
This recently published volume of excerpts includes
a discussion of how women describe their own lives.
March 1993
***Last Update 5/18/94*** (lk)
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