Wild Girls, Tiya Miles
Wild Girls, Tiya Miles
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
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Wild Girls
How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation

Author: Tiya Miles

Narrator: Janina Edwards

Unabridged: 4 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/19/2023


Synopsis

Harriet Tubman, forced to labor outdoors on a Maryland plantation, learned from the land a terrain for escape. Louisa May Alcott ran wild, eluding gendered expectations in New England. The Indigenous women's basketball team from Fort Shaw, Montana, recaptured a sense of pride in physical prowess as they trounced the white teams of the 1904 World's Fair. Celebrating women like these who acted on their confidence outdoors, Wild Girls brings new context to misunderstood icons like Sacagawea and Pocahontas, and to underappreciated figures like Native American activist writer Zitkála-Šá, farmworkers' champion Dolores Huerta, and labor and Civil Rights organizer Grace Lee Boggs.

This work of history puts girls of all races—and the landscapes they loved—at center stage and reveals the impact of the outdoors on women's independence, resourcefulness, and vision. For these trailblazing women of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, navigating the woods, following the stars, playing sports, and taking to the streets in peaceful protest were not only joyful pursuits, but also techniques to resist assimilation, racism, and sexism. Lyrically written and full of archival discoveries, Wild Girls evokes landscapes as richly as the girls who roamed in them—and argues for equal access to outdoor spaces for young women of every race and class today.

About Tiya Miles

Tiya Miles is the Michael Garvey Professor of History at Harvard University, the author of five prize-winning works on the history of slavery and early American race relations, and a 2011 MacArthur Fellowship recipient. She was the founder and director of the Michigan-based ECO Girls program, and she is the author of the National Book Award-winning, New York Times bestselling All That She Carried. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Liz on August 22, 2023

I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway and am providing an honest review. 3 Stars I want to start by saying this book is well written and worth reading. But, that being said, if you are looking for a book to introduce you to a number of women who, through their experiences in nature, deve......more

Goodreads review by Charlene on December 11, 2023

Saw this on new arrivals shelf at the library; the topic (American women’s relationship with nature) and the author who I’ve read before caught my eye. I also liked that it is part of a new series, called Norton Shorts, nf books written by scholars but meant for the general public and limited to 200......more

Goodreads review by Carrie Ann on December 15, 2023

*4.5 rounded to 5* As female who is finishing her PhD in science with a focus on ecology, I I could have easily read 400 pages by Tiya Miles on this topic. However, I realize that this was published in Norton's new "shorts" series which has a mission of sharing important stories in under 200 pages. I......more

Goodreads review by Laura on November 27, 2023

In Wild Girls, Tiya Miles looks at how experience in the outdoors - whether by choice or by force, influenced women who broke boundaries and influenced their communities and the nation. Some of the women featured in here were familiar to me - such as Harriet Tubman, Louisa May Alcott, and Octavia Bu......more

Goodreads review by Cari on December 28, 2023

3.5. Very insightful and intriguing. But felt like I was reading a long winded essay. I would recommend this though to any nature lover who wants to learn more about the marginalized people who pilgrimmed outdoor accessibility for women.......more