Unabashed Women: The Fascinating Biographies of Bad Girls, Seductresses, Rebels and One-of-a-Kind Women

Unabashed Women: The Fascinating Biographies of Bad Girls, Seductresses, Rebels and One-of-a-Kind Women

by Marlene Wagman-Geller
Unabashed Women: The Fascinating Biographies of Bad Girls, Seductresses, Rebels and One-of-a-Kind Women

Unabashed Women: The Fascinating Biographies of Bad Girls, Seductresses, Rebels and One-of-a-Kind Women

by Marlene Wagman-Geller

Paperback

$18.95 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History

#1 New Release in Historical Study Essays

A thrilling journey into the badass women whose non-conventional lives left their DNA on history. Discover words of wisdom from the women who found their voices, inspiring you to do the same.

Amazing women with a story to tell. Join Mae West as she shakes up the entertainment industry with her wit and wisdom or create colorful art pieces with Yayoi Kusama that are larger than life itself. These women in history defied the expectations of conventional society to live the lives they chose, regardless of what others thought.

Words of Wisdom. Society may have labeled these fierce femmes as rebels, bad-ass, wild, or uppity. But, these amazing women still dared to be different. With an out-of-the-box perspective, you’ll find inspiration from an array of fabulous females who will give you a lesson in being one-of-a-kind.

Unabashed Women offers you:

  • Lessons on how to break the glass ceiling
  • Biographies of trailblazing women from all walks of life
  • Empowerment through famous females who dared to go against the grain

If you enjoyed badass books like Women in Art, The Book of Gutsy Women, or In the Company of Women, then you’ll love Unabashed Women.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781642505825
Publisher: TURNER PUB CO
Publication date: 07/29/2021
Series: Celebrating Women
Pages: 312
Sales rank: 1,112,518
Product dimensions: 8.30(w) x 5.40(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range: 12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Marlene Wagman-Geller received her B.A. from York Universityand her teaching credentials from the Universityof Toronto and San Diego State University. Currently she teaches high school English in National City, California. Reviews from her nine books have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Chicago Tribune.

Read an Excerpt

From the book:

“I was never afraid. I was too busy to be afraid.” Nancy Wake

The expression “quiet as a mouse” conjures an image of a timid rodent; however, during the dark days of the last World War, a woman known as the White Mouse possessed the roar of a lion.

In the twilight years of the twentieth century, patrons of London’s Stafford Hotel could have observed a ninety-something-year-old-woman throwing back the first of her day’s several gin and tonics. She had nostalgia for the establishment as in yesteryear it had been the bar where she had taken her first “bloody good drink.”

An unlikely heroine during the years when the swastika held sway, Nancy Grace Augusta Wake was born in a Wellington, New Zealand, shack, the youngest of six children. The Maori mid-wife who delivered her pronounced her a kahu, one who the gods would watch over.

The words rank hollow during Nancy’s childhood in which she shared a guerrilla relationship with her family with the exception of her adored father Charles. The Wakes moved to the suburb of Neutral Bay in Sydney, Australia; shortly afterwards, Charles went AWOL. At age sixteen, Nancy ran away from home and worked as a nurse near Mudgee, Australia.

A 200-pound inheritance from an aunt enabled Nancy to satisfy her wanderlust, and she travelled to New York, Paris, and London: She made France her home and, following in her journalist father’s footsteps, she worked for the Hearst newspaper chain who sent her to Vienna. In Austria she witnessed Nazi gangs beating Jews in the streets. The attacks led to her resolve, “If ever the opportunity arose, I would do everything I could to stop the Nazi involvement. My hatred of the Nazis was very, very deep.”

In the day Wake worked as a reporter, and in the night she frequented the city’s cabarets. Later Nancy recalled of her younger self that she loved nothing more than “a good drink and handsome men, especially French men.” And the French man she fell for was the wealthy, “charming, sexy, and amusing man,” Henri Fiocca. Despite his playboy reputation, she married him in 1939. The couple enjoyed a caviar and champagne lifestyle until Hitler’s army goose-stepped into France. Disgusted at the collaborators, Wake felt she needed to do more than take the role of the three proverbial monkeys, and she volunteered to drive an ambulance.

A chance meeting at a bar in the Hôtel du Louvre et de la Paix in Marseille, France, provided a rebel woman with her cause. Nancy met Scotsman Captain Ian Garrow who enlisted her help with the escape of downed Allied airmen and desperate Jews. Her mission was to escort her charges to the base of the Pyrenees where other guides escorted them to the British Consulate in Barcelona. Henri and Nancy also provided their chalet at Névache, in the Alps, as a safe house in the Resistance’s version of the Underground Railway. With her beauty and scarlet lipstick, Nancy was the epitome of a femme fatale, one who was indeed fatal. Nancy said of her covet operation, “It was much easier for us, you know, to travel all over France. A woman could get out of a lot of trouble that a man could not.” Part of her ability to elude capture was because the Germans could not believe their Goliath was a slender, attractive woman.

Table of Contents

Introduction 13

Chapter 1 Sarah Bernhardt 18

Chapter 2 Elizabeth Cochrane/Nellie Bly 25

Chapter 3 Princess Sophia Duleep Singh 33

Chapter 4 Mae West 40

Chapter 5 Dorothy Parker 47

Chapter 6 P. L. Travers 54

Chapter 7 Ella Maillart 61

Chapter 8 Anaïs Nin 68

Chapter 9 Lillian Hellman 74

Chapter 10 Josephine Baker 82

Chapter 11 Lee Miller 90

Chapter 12 Antonina Zabinski 98

Chapter 13 Martha Gellhorn 106

Chapter 14 Rose Louise Havok/Gypsy Rose Lee 114

Chapter 15 Clare Hollingworth 122

Chapter 16 Nancy Wake 130

Chapter 17 Florynce Kennedy 137

Chapter 18 Bella Abzug 145

Chapter 19 Françoise Gilot 152

Chapter 20 Yayoi Kusama 160

Chapter 21 Barbara Hillary 168

Chapter 22 Miriam Makeba 175

Chapter 23 Diane di Prima 183

Chapter 24 Jane Goodall 190

Chapter 25 Dr. Bridget Rose Dugdale 198

Chapter 26 Shere Hite 206

Chapter 27 Elaine Brown 214

Chapter 28 Janis Joplin 222

Chapter 29 Ingrid Newkirk 230

Chapter 30 Malalai Joya 238

Chapter 31 Megan Rapinoe 246

Chapter 32 Billie Eilish 254

Chapter 33 Greta Thunberg 261

Epilogue 269

Acknowledgements 274

Bibliography 276

About the Author 311

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews