"Monson reimagines the campfire tall tale by introducing readers to overlooked talks of many forgotten heroines of the American West. Each biographical story defines perseverance, and there are inspiring examples of courage on each page as well as new lessons in how to live. Monson succinctly portrays a pioneering suffragette, a Sioux writer, and the most celebrated stagecoach driver in the West, who hid her gender most of her life. Another impressive pioneer is Clara Brown, a former slave who helped others make their ways from bondage to a better life in Colorado. Monson's accounts of these women who defied gender roles, who lived and breathed feminism, will resonate with all interested in the long-hidden chapters in American history. A compact, informative, briskly paced, emotionally rich, and eye-opening set of micro-biographies that will change truncated views of the West."
Frontier Grit: The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women
Narrated by Caroline Shaffer
Marianne MonsonUnabridged — 5 hours, 48 minutes
Frontier Grit: The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women
Narrated by Caroline Shaffer
Marianne MonsonUnabridged — 5 hours, 48 minutes
Overview
Discover the stories of twelve women who heard the call to settle the west and who came from all points of the globe to begin their journey. As a slave, Clara watched as her husband and children were sold, only to be reunited with her youngest daughter, as a free woman, six decades later. As a young girl, Charlotte hid her gender to escape a life of poverty and became the greatest stagecoach driver that ever lived. As a Native American, Gertrude fought to give her people a voice and to educate leaders about the ways and importance of her culture.
These are gripping miniature dramas of good-hearted women, selfless providers, courageous immigrants and migrants, and women with skills too innumerable to list. Many were crusaders for social justice and women's rights. All endured hardships, overcame obstacles, broke barriers, and changed the world.
The author ties the stories of these pioneer women to the experiences of women today with the hope that they will be inspired to live boldly and bravely and to fill their own lives with vision, faith, and fortitude. To live with grit.
Editorial Reviews
2017 Amelia Bloomer Award nominee recognizing books that "affirm positive roles for girls and women".
"This little nugget is a delightful find and carries quite a punch for a small book. The stories of 12 fascinating women will captivate you while exposing you to the history they did not teach us in school. The author purposefully chose 12 women of different nationalities, ethnic backgrounds, and socioeconomic status, to illustrate the diversity of the American West. Contrary to what our history textbooks and the Hollywood movies claim, white males were not even half the true story of the West much less the whole story. Monson wants to help correct that distortion. She hopes that by understanding the severe restrictions on women in the 19th century, modern women will understand how much we owe those who came before us, and understand what they were risking by pursuing their goals."
Foreword Reviews 2016 Indies Book of the Year Award finalist—HISTORY
"Worthy compilation...Many sources and references listed for those who wish to discover more."
"An invaluable contribution to American History shelves and utterly absorbing from cover to cover. Highly recommended, especially for public and college library collections."
2017 Amelia Bloomer Award nominee recognizing books that "affirm positive roles for girls and women".
"Monson reimagines the campfire tall tale by introducing readers to overlooked talks of many forgotten heroines of the American West. Each biographical story defines perseverance, and there are inspiring examples of courage on each page as well as new lessons in how to live. Monson succinctly portrays a pioneering suffragette, a Sioux writer, and the most celebrated stagecoach driver in the West, who hid her gender most of her life. Another impressive pioneer is Clara Brown, a former slave who helped others make their ways from bondage to a better life in Colorado. Monson's accounts of these women who defied gender roles, who lived and breathed feminism, will resonate with all interested in the long-hidden chapters in American history. A compact, informative, briskly paced, emotionally rich, and eye-opening set of micro-biographies that will change truncated views of the West."
There's admiration in Caroline Shaffer's voice as she narrates the stories of 12 women and their accomplishments in the American West. At the end of each chapter, author Marianne Monson shares the inspiration she found in each story. There are firsts: the first woman to register to vote in Oregon, the first Mexican-American female novelist, the first female state senator. There are stories of adventure, such as that of a woman who, disguised as a man, drove a stagecoach. There are personal stories, such as an African-American businesswoman's search for her daughter. Shaffer performs a variety of voices to preserve the women's words. Listeners will no doubt find the women Monson writes about as admirable as she does. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940169634990 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 09/06/2016 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
Introduction What is a frontier? If I was going to write a book about female pioneers, I needed to define what I meant by the term, and any attempt at defining "pioneer" brought me back to that illusive word. Was the frontier simply an imaginary boundary, a constantly moving line between supposed "civilization" and the "unknown" West? To me, it is simply a place where your people have not gone before-it is the place on the map where the collective thinking of your society draws a large and compelling question mark. Of course, this doesn't have to be a geographical boundary-it might be an unexplored theological issue, a topic of conversation no one is comfortable discussing, an unfolding intellectual sphere, a newly-invented technology, or an insight irreconcilable with current social norms. Just because no one you know has been there doesn't mean that it's never been inhabited by another group of people who have a prior claim to the place. But because no one you know has ever been there before, the space is wide open to possibility-a place where rules are still being worked out and decided. Frontier space is available to anyone, not just big players who ruled in the past. It's a place where the average person can help determine the way things are going to work, because it's still anyone's guess how the future will unfold. The freedom of such a space is as exhilarating as it is disconcerting, and in a true frontier, the traditional safeguards and protections are as glaringly absent as the stifling rules. People can and will get hurt. That is why rules were made in the first place, at least hypothetically. I was raised on the stories of strong pioneer women. Within my own family history, I have women who left luxury in England, positions of leadership among the Maori in New Zealand, and those who were drawn by their poverty from Wales. Some of my ancestors set up house in an abandoned chicken coop. I was raised on these stories. The blood of these women runs through my veins and I grew up seeing my life as a continuation of their own. In many ways, all of our lives are. The frontier as we've defined it could as easily apply to modern technology, with its resulting onslaught of related inventions, as it does to the American West. We live today in a world of upheaval, a world that is changing at a frantic pace, a world where many boundaries of the past have been flung away, and we are now again deciding: what are the new rules? And who gets to say? Now, more than ever, we need to know the stories of the women whose blood runs through our veins, either literally or metaphorically. While working on this project, I came across a box of books discarded by my university's library. Never one to pass up free book, I sorted through the stack and found an old, leather-bound volume entitled Pioneers of California. Thinking it might be useful, I thumbed through the pages. Chapter after chapter of the book profiled ministers, governors, politicians, settlers, and gold rushers. Without a single exception, they were white. And they were all male. The book served as a reminder that we are not many generations removed from a time when it was perfectly acceptable to tell the story of California through the eyes of white males alone. But history is made up of so much more than wars and official government documents. It is made up of people-their stories, failures, and triumphs. As one prominent historian has noted, "If history is to be creative, to anticipate new possibilities without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare" (Zinn, 11). Thousands of women-black, white, Native American, Mexican, Chinese, Polynesian, and other racial variations-experienced the frontier. As the "pioneers of California" can be broadened to include women, so can the term also be redefined to no longer be the special province of U.S. expansionism. The women in this book come from a wide variety of backgrounds and traveled in a number of different directions-these stories represent a mere handful of the women who survived and even thrived on a number of gritty, tumultuous frontiers. Many were crushed by the challenges, their voices silenced and discarded in the passing of time. But some of them triumphed; some of their stories remain. In spite of all odds stacked against them, their voices persist, whether through a journal kept in a leaky wagon, or through a life so remarkable the world was forced to take note. Fragments of their stained, complicated, gloriously real lives have been passed onto us, giving us tales to fuel our own efforts to build on these "fugitive moments of compassion," and create lives that will become stories worth telling. The further I got into this project, the more I marveled at the contemporary relevance of these women. So many of the questions that still haunt and inspire us, both as individuals and as a nation, can be traced to the events contained in the lives of these women. You will be astonished at how familiar their struggles appear, and I can promise that you will find yourself in these pages. Pioneering of every variety, in every generation, requires a stubbornness of thought, a willingness to disregard public opinion, and a grit to endure. These stories are fit inspiration for modern-day efforts to venture into new and unknown paths, to climb ragged, rocky mountains, and to cling to a vision of how we might rebuild this tumultuous world into something better, truer and stronger for generations yet to come. Enjoy this journey, and find impetus here to forge your own frontier.
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