WOMEN SPEAK OF THEIR LIVES: TWENTIETH-CENTURY AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
A Short List of References

Compiled by Sheridan Harvey
Reference Specialist in Women's Studies
Humanities and Social Sciences Division

March 1993

CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION

Angelou, Maya.
  I know why the caged bird sings. -- New York : Random
  House, [1970]. -- 281 p.        PS3551.N464 Z466 1970
    This poet, playwright, and political activist
  describes her childhood, growing up poor and Black in
  Depression Arkansas. 

Dillard, Annie.
  An American childhood. -- New York : Harper & Row,
  c1987. -- 255 p.               PS3554.I398 Z464 1987 
    Detailed reminiscence of intellectual development
  in Pittsburgh in the 1940s.

Beauvoir, Simone de.
  Memoirs of a dutiful daughter. -- Cleveland : World
  Pub. Co., [1959]. -- 382 p.           PQ603.E362 Z523
    Translated from the French.
    Passage from a Parisian bourgeois family to the
  Sorbonne and Sartre.

Cary, Lorene.
  Black ice. -- New York : Knopf : Distributed by
  Random House, 1991. -- 237 p.         F44.C7 C35 1991
    Experiences of an African American at an elite New
  England prep school.

POLITICS AND WAR

Brittain, Vera.
  Testament of youth : an autobiographical study of the
  years 1900-1925. -- New York : Penguin Books, 1989.
  -- 661 p.                       PR6003.R385 Z479 1989
    Originally published in London in 1933.
    Records the horrors of nursing during World War I
  in England, experiences that led her to feminism and
  pacifism.

Cheng, Nien.
  Life and death in Shanghai. -- New York : Grove
  Press, 1987. -- 547 p.              DS778.7.C445 1987
    Writes of years of suffering at the hands of the
  Chinese Red Guards.


Ginzburg, Evgeniia Semenovna.
  Journey into the whirlwind. -- New York : Harcourt,
  Brace & World, [1967]. -- 418 p.         DK268.3.G513
    Translated from the Russian.
    A university teacher was sent to Stalin's prison
  camps.

Menchu, Rigoberta.
  I, Rigoberta Menchu : an Indian woman in Guatemala /
  translated by Ann Wright. -- London : Verso, c1984. -
  - 251 p.                        F1465.2.Q5 M3813 1984
    This twenty-three year old daughter of the Quich‚
  tribe recounts years of civil war in Guatemala.

MIDLIFE AND AGING

Lindberg, Anne Morrow.
  Gift from the sea. -- New York : Pantheon, 1955. --
  127 p.                                      BD435.L52
    A study of the interwoven strands of a life as
  writer, wife, and mother.

Sarton, May.
  Journal of a solitude. -- New York : Norton, [1973].
  -- 208 p.                      PS3537.A832 Z4667 1973
    Searching for quiet in a society that rarely values
  it.

ANTHOLOGY

Written by herself : autobiographies of American women
  : an anthology / edited and with an introduction by
  Jill Ker Conway. -- New York : Vintage Books, 1992. 
  -- 672 p.                           PS647.W6 W75 1992
    This recently published volume of excerpts includes
  a discussion of how women describe their own lives.

                                             March 1993

***Last Update 5/18/94***  (lk)