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Throughout my life and travels I’ve looked to many strong women as guides, mentors, and inspirations. Some were women I knew personally, others I knew from afar...
...and still others spoke to me from the pages of books.
The stacks at The Community Library are packed with stories of women upon whose shoulders we stand today—thanks to their wisdom and sacrifices, and their courage to forge new, dangerous, and unpopular paths.
Whatever you may be looking for – inspiration, courage, delight – you can find it at The Community Library, in print and digital books, film, and music. To get you started, our librarians have curated a list of book recommendations to celebrate Women’s History Month—including titles about Rosa Parks, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Martha Gellhorn, Benazir Bhutto, Cassidy Hutchinson, and others.
My personal favorite and a massive inspiration is the extraordinary tale of Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations, a biography by Georgina Howell. While other Victorian women were busy learning the proper way to pour tea and close parlor doors, Gertrude Bell was earning a degree at Oxford, making first ascents in the Swiss Alps, becoming an accomplished writer, photographer, and archaeologist, and – most impactfully – traveling extensively through the Middle East.
Picture if you will, Gertrude Bell in her fur coat, astride a camel, trekking uncharted desert territories ruled by warring tribes, with a caravan behind her hauling fine bone China and crystal goblets. (Let’s just concede that she invented “glamping.”)
In this manner, she explored Palestine, Syria, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Damascus, Antioch, Beirut, Mesopotamia, the lands of the Druze and the Bedouin, and points in between, during which time she met and forged relationships with sheikhs, kings, rulers, and other leaders of the Ottoman Empire, Mesopotamia, and Arabia.
Through her travels, she became fluent in multiple languages and dialects of the Middle East, including Arabic, Farsi, and Turkish. Not to mention she spoke French, German, Italian, and, well, English.
In the early 1900s, Gertrude Bell was considered the most powerful woman in the British Empire.
She participated in the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and was a key player in the 1921 Cairo Conference, which defined the post-World War I territories and leadership of the Middle East.
Women like Gertrude Bell, and much more modestly, my grandmother, inspired my own gumption and longing to travel to points unknown. If you scour the stacks, you might even stumble across a little known and mostly uncelebrated memoir by yours truly: Lost and Found in Egypt: A Most Unlikely Journey through the Shifting Sands of Love and Loss.
I owe a debt of gratitude to the women who inspired me over the decades, from my youngest years, through all the ups and downs, to today. Because of these breakers of trails and ceilings and assumptions, there’s nothing more compelling for me than a dot on a map or a dirt road that curves and disappears into an untamed forest.
Another journey always waits – for me, for you – between the covers of a book or just outside the back door.
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