Two must read books for creative women by women. Sometimes being creative can be hard. Most of us need to recharge and find sources to keep that creativity going. For me, that is usually found in books, although I do enjoy going to the ballet and to galleries and I would never say no to a long walk somewhere far away from civilization.

The problem I find with many books is that they offer advice that I don’t need or want or the authors are too self-absorbed for my taste. There are a few authors out there who have built their entire careers around books that are very self-indulgent and basically about them complaining. I’m sorry but reading about all of your neuroses and issues isn’t going to inspire me to delve further into my art.

TWO MUST READ BOOKS FOR CREATIVE WOMEN BY WOMEN

There are a few books, however that I’ve recently discovered where I can truly identify with the author or subject and they make me want to pursue my writing. I crave discovering my history and that of others. I want to know what someone overcame to get to where they are. I want to know about their story and where they came from.

she saw how creativity arises from material circumstances, how power is wielded against the vulnerable, and-crucially-how class, gender, and race intersect.
Maggie Doherty, 2020 p263

The Equivalents by Maggie Doherty. I truly believe that every creative woman needs to know her past. I don’t care where in the world you come from, there are women who helped pave the way for what you can do now. It’s impossible to move forward if we don’t know anything about the past.

When Radcliffe, Harvard’s sister college, announces that they are going to be giving paid fellowships to women who have PhD’s or the equivalent in artistic achievement, thousands of women apply.

This was the early 1960’s and women’s liberation was just beginning. Essentially this “messy experiment“, as the book calls it, was bringing Virginia Woolf’s, A Room Of One’s Own to life.

Five of the women who receive fellowships are, writer Tillie Olsen, painter Barbara Swan, sculptor Marianna Pineda, and poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin. The book weaves their stories while seamlessly juxtaposing their lives with the same issues or similar issues that women are having today.

Not only that but Doherty covers women’s (in)equality and race (in)equality and class (in)equality.

“While white women fled the civil rights movement to start working for women’s liberation, black women were torn between their commitment to black liberation and their desire for gender equality, both in the movement and in the world at large.” – The Equivalents
Maggie Doherty, 2020 p.269

This book is an absolute pleasure to read. Although it looks like a long read, it’s not. The hard cover copy has beautiful thick pages with a rough edge and feels like you are reading a journal I have the hard cover copy. The pages, with their rough edge feel like a journal. It was published in 2020 by Alfred A. Knopf.

The Equivalents A story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s

My Life On The Road by Gloria Steinem. From the first page I knew this book was for me. Everything clicked. Gloria Steinem is now on my list of people I’d love to have lunch with. I want to pick her brain and learn from her. I want to know how she was able to break the mold of what was expected of women in her day.

Gloria Steinem and the activists she worked with, too many to name in this very short write-up, are all incredible women who brought to light not only women’s rights but also those of African American women and Native (Indigenous) Women.

She effectively takes a step back (something we should all be doing) to listen and learn from other cultures and their experiences, while lending her voice to help bring theirs to the forefront.

When so many around her were trying to put her in a box, telling her what to write and how to live her life, Steinem chose her own path.

There is a crossover with both the books which help put the feminist fight of the 1960s, 1970s and beyond into perspective. One of my favourite things about this book is that not only does she tell her story but she also tells the stories of people she randomly meets.

Published in 2016, My Life On The Road took two decades to write. It’s the kind of paperback you want to throw in your bag and pull out every time you are struggling and need a pep talk. Make sure to read the dedication, it gave me goose bumps.

What I love most about both the books is that they focus on strong women who really and truly wanted to make a change. Were they perfect? No. Is there still a lot of work that we need to do? Absolutely but I think that we first need to know the history of our ‘fight’.

Now you might be thinking that these books are very politically oriented and how does that apply to the arts? It does, 100%. It’s hard enough to get arts funding when times are good but when your government isn’t amenable to supporting the arts then it makes everything that much harder.

I mentioned the concept of “a room of one’s own” earlier. The theory is that every woman needs a place (a room) of her own where she can create without being encumbered by life. In order to do that, however, she needs time and as we all know time comes down to money. Think about it, if you are constantly juggling kids, your work and the household chores, it’s nearly impossible to carve time out for yourself. You might be saying that your partner should be helping and while that’s a fairly normal occurrence now, it wasn’t that way just fifty years ago.

Adrienne Rich, essayist and poet (seriously both books made me run to the internet to learn about all these amazing women), “I believe profoundly that the woman artist, even if she can find space and support herself in it, must not fall into the trap of working, or trying to work, in isolation. But even Woolf implies … that a female community must come into being.”
Maggie Doherty, 2020 p305

By reading books like this you become a part of the community.