Women's History Month commemorates the important role women have played in our world’s history. So in honor of their legacies, here are a few of my top favorite historical fiction stories about strong women who persevered through adversity, both fictional and real. If you’ve been looking for a good read, take a look at one of the stories below to feel empowered by the many powerful women who came before us.

1. ​Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

​Take My Hand tells the story of young African American nurse, Civil Townsend. After graduating from nursing school in 1973, she finds herself working at the Montgomery family planning clinic. India and Erica Williams, two very poor 11 and 13-year old sisters, are Civil’s first clients. As she takes the whole Williams family under her wing, Civil realizes she and her sisters are unwilling participants in a government-funded sterilization trial. This historical fiction tackles another shameful chapter in US history--the forced sterilization of young African American women–which led to many of the young ladies developing cancer. 

The protagonist, Civil Townsend, is unflinching and brave in the face of hardship. Since she has the advantage of being the daughter of a successful, wealthy lawyer, she does not actually need the nursing job and is thus able to take a moral stand and fight the injustice of the program.

2. ​The White Girl by Tony Birch

Odette Brown has lived her whole life on the fringes of a small country town. After her daughter disappeared and left her with her granddaughter Sissy to raise on her own, Odette has managed to stay under the radar of the welfare authorities who are removing light skinned Aboriginal children (indigenous Australians) from their families. When a new policeman arrives in town, determined to enforce the law, Odette must risk everything to save her granddaughter. This is a look into the oppressive practice of the Australian government in removing indigenous children from their homes in order to assimilate them into white society back in the 1960s.

The White Girl is a beautiful story about one strong woman’s desire to protect her granddaughter at all costs, and make a better life for her. During this time, Aboriginal people could not be Australian citizens or make basic decisions for themselves, such as when and where to travel and what job they could have. Odette’s strength and perseverance against all odds was truly inspirational, especially for this time period.

3. ​The Radium Girls by Kate Moore

The story chronicles the lives of female employees of radium factories who painted luminous dials on watches using camel hair brushes. These brushes lost their shape after a few strokes, so in order to save time, they were instructed to “point” the brushes with their lips or tongue, instead of using rags or water, exposing them to deadly radium. The factories were so popular, due to the pay, and the “glow” the women had from the radium exposure, which they were assured was perfectly safe. Some of the women even painted the substance onto their faces to see themselves glow in the dark. 

Eventually, five women decided to take on the radium companies in court. For many years, the factories refused to accept that the radium was dangerous, trying to hide the truth by any means. Though it may be a painful story of greed and deceit, it also proves what can happen if you stand up for yourself and refuse to give up.  It was heartbreaking to read the gruesome, unimaginable suffering these women endured because of the company’s negligence.The women featured here saved countless lives while giving their own. 

4. ​Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang

​The book tells the story of three generations of women in Jung Chang’s family. The first is her grandmother Yu-fang, who grew up in a pre-communist China, a time when women had their feet bound as children and could be given to warlords as concubines. The second is Chang’s mother, De-hong, who became a senior official in the communist party following their victory over the Kuomintang. The third is Jung Chang herself, and the longest, most compelling section of the book is devoted to her own experiences during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. One of the most horrible things in the story was the description of Chang’s grandmother’s footbinding. It’s awful to believe little girls were forced to undergo this just because tiny feet were “the ideal”. However, this is just the first in a long series of shocking events, such as the Civil War, where inflation rose so quickly beggars began selling their children in exchange for a bag of rice. All three of the women were forced to endure hardships and ordeals that are unimaginable to most of us, but remained strong and courageous throughout it all. However, it is also the story of an entire nation that persevered through this period of cruelty and despair.

5. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

​Covering Maya Angelou’s childhood of the 1930s in the American south, this book is the first of seven volumes depicting her life as an African American woman. Her and her brother, Bailey, live with their grandmother after their parents sent them to live with her from California, but while their lives in Stamps are mostly easy-going, that all changes when their father comes to get them to live with their mother in St Louis. Angelou’s early life in Arkansas featured parental abandonment, overt racism, sexual abuse, discrimination, and poverty. 

The story’s events are told through the eyes of an 8-year-old Angelou, representing her childish naivete at the time as well as how her experiences changed her perspective. Her love for writing can also be seen as her early exposure to books and words materialize into the thing she used and loved in her later life, eventually becoming a poet, author, civil rights activist, speaker, friend and advisor to figures of national and international importance before passing away in 2014.

6. ​Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

​During the early years of the aviation and aerospace industries, “Human Computers” were terrifically talented people who did the most complex math and science calculations for aircraft and space missions. At NACA (predecessor of NASA), this job was taken on by women during World War ll while many men were away at war. In the face of segregation, a large group of these women were African American. Hidden Figures tells the story of four of these women’s contributions to the war effort and winning the race to the moon.

Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden faced and surmounted the many challenges brought on to them in the workplace: segregated cafeteria tables, a “colored” bathroom ridiculously far from an assigned work group, and not being allowed into various work meetings where they could reasonably make a contribution. It was amazing to see not only the brain power of the women, but also their grace under pressure, unquestionably going down in history as heroes, in the names of science and equality.

STEPHANIE MURILLO