Dressmaking class, Manzanar Relocation Center. Ansel Adams, photograph. 1943. Prints and Photographs Division. LC-DIG-ppprs-00302 (b&w digital file from original print) bibliographic record

The experiences of women from several different cultures, regions, and time periods can be highlighted by the following examples from the Library's collections. They are not limited to items in Area Studies, but represent the myriad print and nonprint media found throughout the Library. Our hope in this discussion is to suggest previously unexplored channels that can enlarge our understanding of United States women's history. The approach resembles that of two other Library of Congress resource guides, Many Nations: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Indian and Alaska Native Peoples of the United States and The African-American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture.²

The Library's abundant collections of memoir literature, autobiographies, interviews, and oral histories in several languages and formats provide a corpus of firsthand information for learning about women's experiences and lives. Among those who did not have to emigrate to become American was Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert. In her memoir of her family and community, We Fed Them Cactus (1954; 1994), she chronicles the evolution of Hispanics in New Mexico at the end of the nineteenth century. A half-century later, an oral history interview titled “Yoshi Mary Tashima: Evacuation to Santa Anita Assembly Center” discusses a woman's ordeal in an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. More recently, Monique Ugbaja, a newly arrived immigrant, records in In the Secret Place: The Ordeal of an African First Wife in America (1996) the contemporary difficulties of broken homes and divorce.³