I was just browsing through my mind’s files the other day (as you do), and started to compile a list of books (both fiction and non-fiction) which featured women who were strong in some way – leaders in their community, strong views/values, emotional strength – all kinds.

And thus, this list was born (female metaphor there). (These are just the titles that I have read so far… Feel free to add your own suggestions.) After reading the drivel of Moran’s book (and to continue the women’s history trend I’m on), I thought it would be really good to think of some women who were more admirable in many ways. I also find it to be fascinating that sometimes you can have an unlikeable protagonist, but still admire her for her strength, however it may manifest itself.

• The Stone Angel – Margaret Laurence (1964) – great but pre-blog
• Matilda – Roald Dahl (1988)
• Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga (1989)
• Emily Alone – Stewart O’Nann (2011)
• Firegirl – Tony  Abbott (YA) (2006)
• The Hunger Games trilogy – Suzanna Collins (various)
• Once Were Warriors – Alan Duff (1990)
• Love Amongst the Butterflies – Margaret Fountaine (Vic writer; pub. 1978)
• Letters of a Woman Homesteader – Emily Pruitt Stewart (1914)
• My Stroke of Insight – Jill Bolte Taylor (2006)
• Radioactive (Marie Curie) – Lauren Redniss (2010)
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy (1891)
• A Sky Full of Kindness – Rob Ryan (2011)
• The Odd Women – George Gissing (1892)
• My Life in France – Julia Child (2009)
• The Diary of a Good Neighbor – Doris Lessing (2009)
• If the Old Could – Doris Lessing (2009)
• Diary of an Ordinary Woman – Margaret Forster (2004)
• The Dressmaker of Khair Khana – Gial Tzemech Lemmon (2010)
• Anne of Green Gables – L. M. Montgomery (1908)
• Monique and the Mango Rains – Kris Holloway (2006)
• Two Old Women (Alaska tribe) – Velma Wallis (1993)
• Lark Rise to Candleford – Flora Thompson (1945)
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloots (2010)
• Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education  – Jane Robinson (2009)
• Nella Last’s War – Nella Last (1981)
• A Child of the Forest trilogy – Winifred Foley (1974)
• Foreign and Female: Immigrant Women in America 1910-1932 – Doris Weatherford (1986)
• House on Mango Street – Sandra Cisneros (1984)
• Still Alice – Lisa Genova (2009)
• Sarah, Plain and Tall – Patricia McLaughlin (1986)
• Persepolis books – Marijane Strapi (2003)
• Out to Pasture – Effie Lelander Wilde (1995)
• These is my Words – Nancy Turner (1999)
• Number One Ladies Detective Agency books – Alexander McCall Smith (1998)
• Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert, and the Death that Changed the British Monarchy – Helen Rappaport (2011)
• As We Are Now – May Sarton (1992( (plus epistolary as well) – bliss
• Bachelor Girl: The Secret Story of Single Women – Beby Israel (2002)
• Song of the Lark – Willa Cather (1915)
• The Marie Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Women in Science – Julie des Jardins (2010)

Added 07/2015:

• Like One of the Family – Alice Childress (1956)
• Brown Girl, Brownstones – Paule Marshall (1959)
• So Long a Letter – Mariama Ba (1989)
• Little Bee – Chris Cleave (2008)
• Lean In – Sheryl Sandburg (2013)
• Saddlebags for Suitcases – Mary Bosanquet (1942)
• Elizabeth is Missing – Emma Healey (2014)
• An Unnecessary Woman – Rabih Alameddine (2014)
• Giants in the Earth – O. E. Rolvaag (1927)
• Charlotte’s Web – E. B. White (1952)
• I See You Made an Effort – Annabelle Gurwitch (2014)
• Are you there, God? It’s me, Margaret – Judy Blume (1970)
• Period Piece – Gwen Ravarat (1952)
• Gift from the Sea – Anna Morrow Lindbergh (1955)
• Sister Carrie – Theodor Dreiser (1900)
• Orange is the New Black – Piper Kerman (2011)
• Annie Dunne – Sebastian Barry (2002)
• Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor (1995)
• When Everything Changed – Gail Collins (2009)
• Tangles – Sarah Leavitt (2012)
• Logavina Street – Barbara Demick (2012)
• Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood (almost anything by Atwood will fit the bill but watch out for some of her earlier stuff as it can be a bit iffy in quality)
• Black Beauty – Anna Sewell (1877)
• America’s Women – Gail Collins (2003)
• The Story of My Life – Helen Keller (1902)
• As for Me and my House – Sinclair Ross (1941)
• Parnassus on Wheels – Christopher Morley (1917)
• The Grandmothers – Doris Lessing (2003)
• The Making of an American Quilt – Whitney Otto (1991)
• Venus with Biceps – David Chapman/Patricia Vertinsky (2010)
• Relish: My Life in the Kitchen – Lucy Knisley (2013)
• Winter Wheat – Mildred Walker (1951)
• American Women in Letters – Dorothy Rappaport (1990)
• Ten Days in the Madhouse – Nellie Bly (1887)
• Bite of the Mango – Kamara Mariato (2008)
• The Spare Room – Helen Garner (2008)

Added 02/16:

• The Color Purple – Alice Walker (1983)
• We Should all be Feminists – Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie (2012)
• Praisesong for the Widow – Paule Marshall (1997)
• Aya graphic novels by Marguerit Abouet and Clement Oubrerie (2012-)
• The Country Girls trilogy – Edna O’Brien (1960’s)

Added 08/17:

• Carol – Patricia Highsmith (1952)
• A Raisin in the Sun – Lorraine Hainesberry (1959) Play
• Beloved – Toni Morrison (1987)
• Textbook Amy Kraus Rosenthal – Amy Kraus Rosenthal (2016)
• Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life – Amy Kraus Rosenthal (2005)
• Sula – Toni Morrison (1973)
• The Endless Steppe – Esther Hautzig (1968)
• Black Women of the Old West – William Loren Katz (1995)
• Hope in the Dark – Rebecca Solnit (2016)
• Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie (2014)
• A Child in the Forest trilogy – Winifred Foley (1974)
• The Woman Warrior – Maxine Hong Kingston (1975)

Added 01/18:

• Jazz – Toni Morrison (1992)
• At the Broken Places (memoir) – Mary Collins and Donald Collins (2017)
• Texas Quilts, Texas Women – Suzanne Yabsley (1986)
• Elizabeth the Queen – Sally Bedell Smith (2012)

Added 02/20:

• Warriors Don’t Cry – Melba Padillo Beals (1995)
• The Power – Naomi Alderman (2016)
• Convenience Store Woman – Sayaka Marata (2018)
• Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History – Vashti Harrison (2017)
• All Passion Spent – Vita Sackville-West (1931)
• What Looks like Crazy on an Ordinary Day – Pearl Cleage (1997)
• Becoming – Michelle Obama (2018)
• For Her Own Good: 150 Years of Expert Advice – Barbara Ehrenreich and Deidre English (2005)
• The New Moon’s Arms – Nalo Hopkinson (2007)
• The Parable of the Sower – Octavia Butler (1993)
• The Secret History of Trump’s Women – Nina Burleigh (2018)
• Pandora’s Daughters – Jane Robinson (2002)
• Mama Day – Gloria Naylor (1988)
• The Book on Medical Discourses in Two Parts – Rebecca Lee Crumpler (1883)
• Bailey’s Cafe – Gloria Naylor (1992)
• The Women of Brewster Place – Gloria Naylor (1982)
• Celia, A Slave – Melton McLaurin (1999)
• The Handmaid’s Tale – M. Atwood and R. Nault (graphic novel)
• Home-Fires: The Story of the WI in WW2 – Julie Summers (2015)
• Girl, Woman, Other – Bernadine Evaristo (2019)
• The Education of a WASP – Lois Mark Stanley (1970)
• Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press – James McGrath Morris (2015)

Any other suggestions?…