Celebrate International Women's Day with International Literature by Women

Posted on March 07, 2018

What's International Women's Day? It's a March 8th holiday with purported roots in both ancient Rome and Soviet Socialism, according to a recent article in Russian Life.

In its modern form, International Women's Day is understood differently by different people. For some, it's a time to give women flowers and "pleasant surprises of the breakfast-in-bed variety"(ibid.) For others, it celebrates women's art, activism, and contributions to public life (See the March 8th bread riots that launched the Russian revolution and the current Twitter feed.) If you're interested in the latter form of the holiday, here's some writing by and about women from Words Without Borders:

• Milgrom: Can a new generation of women escape women's traditional fates?
• The Egyptian Tomb: A mother and daughter, conflict and connection, in Mexico
• Mrs Saniya's Holiday: A working mother in Egypt
• Thunder grandmas: Ideas for teaching a memoir about the clash of modern life and traditional beliefs in Kazakhstan
• Cat-girl in a Scandinavian Dystopia: Teaching a graphic novel about a girl created to serve "other people's dreams"
• Amina Saïd's Border-Defining Poetry: Teaching lyrical poems from Tunisia
• "An Uncoincidence, a Noncoincidence:" From the eminent Russian poet Larissa Miller

To find many other texts, search "women authors" on the "Find" page, or see the blog post "7 Complex Female Characters in International Literature"