Redheaded Reviews: Still I Rise: The Persistance of Phenomenal Women by Marlene Wagman-Geller

This book contains the incredible stories of women who have lived amazing lives that changed the lives of others. For example, Irene Sendler lived in occupied Poland in 1940 during a typhus epidemic in the Jewish ghetto. And like when she was in school and disagreed with the segregation policy and scratched up her religion section and went and sat in the Jewish section, she decided to go and help the Jews. A group of them got medical badges to go into the ghetto. They snuck in supplies and food. Irene had an idea of sneaking out the toddlers and babies since they were hearing tales of death camps and she was trying to save the children. She took down the children's information if the parents decided to give them up and wrote down what church, orphanage, or family they went to and put it into a jar and buried it under a tree. In 1943 the Nazis were on to her and she had to go into hiding. After the war, she dug up the jars and did her best to reunite the children with their families. She might have remained unknown if not for the Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem who in 1965 honored her with the Righteous Gentile award. In 2007 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize but lost to Al Gore.

Fannie Lou Hamer was an African American woman born in Mississippi in 1917 and who didn't know her place. She had two miscarriages and then went into the hospital to remove a tumor and wound up with a "Mississippi appendectomy" or a hysterectomy. This got her fired up and involved in the Civil Rights movement where she found out she had the right to vote. When she and a group of them went to the county seat to register to vote, they faced a literacy test and were forced to list where they worked and where they lived which meant that the Klan would know and they could lose their jobs and the Klan could attack their homes. Which is what happened to her. She lost her home and her place on the farm sharecropping. That just made her more determined. When she and a group were headed out on a bus and stopped to get something to eat, the police arrested the others who had gotten off the bus and when she realized this she got off and made sure she got arrested too. Realizing that she was a rabble-rouser they had some men beat her as hard as they could with sticks. Fannie Lou Hamer continued to fight for voting rights and became known for saying during the Democratic National Convention of 1968, "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired!" It made her the voice of voting rights. In 2009 she was put on a US stamp. Hamer never gave up and never stopped fighting.

Other women this book includes is Dr. Ruth who was a sniper in the Israeli Army and a educator on sex, Joan Rivers who fought hard to make it in a man's world of humor, Claudette Colvin the first woman to be arrested for sitting in the wrong section of the bus, Mildred Loving who married a white man and fought a harsh legal battle to stay married to him, Carrie Fisher who battled bipolar disorder and Maya Angelou who grew up in poverty, rape, drugs, illegitimacy, and rose to become a famous actress and writer and whose poem is the basis of the title of this book: "You may shoot me with your words/ You may cut me with your eyes/ You may kill me with your hatefulness/ but still, like air, I will rise." This is an incredible book that contains a list of unbelievable women who are too amazing to read about. I really loved this book and I give it five out of five stars.

Quotes

In the words of Oprah, “Turn your wounds into wisdom”.

-Marlene Wagman-Geller (Still I Rise:The Persistence of Phenomenal Women p 17)

Each one of us has the chance to be a rainbow in somebody’s cloud.

-Maya Anglou

I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.

-Fannie Lou Hamer

When Carson asked if men ever liked her [Joan Rivers] for her mind, she responded that no man ever put his hand up a woman’s dress looking for her library card.

-Marlene Wagman-Geller (Still I Rise: The Persistence of Phenomenal Women p 120)

You know how they say that religion is the opiate of the masses? Well I took masses of opiates religiously.

-Carrie Fisher