This is a collaborative post: Looking for another life to marvel at and tired of reading about heroic men? We don’t blame you, so we have compiled a list of 6 of the best biographies to read about inspiring women. No two of the following six biographies are the same; they explore game-changing women from various spheres, from literary icons to artists to NASA employees.
Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo — Hayden Herrera
Known to most as the Mexican modern artist donning the iconic monobrow, Herrera unveils the dark truths about Kahlo’s troubled life, from a serious injury at 18 that left her incapacitated to a turbulent marriage characterised by numerous affairs on her husband’s part. Still, at its core, the biography is more about Kahlo’s artistic genius and well worth the read if you like gutsy women who rise up in the face of adversity.
Savage Beauty — Nancy Milford
Milford catalogues the life of the first female Pulitzer Prize winner, Edna St. Vincent Millay. Millay was at large during the Jazz Age, among fellow literary icons like F. Scott Fitzgerald. Savage Beauty paints a detailed picture of Millay’s fun and eccentric lifestyle, as well as her family relationships with her sisters and mother, earning it a well-deserved spot on any list of the best biographies of all time about women.
Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath & Life Before Ted — Andrew Wilson
We all know how Sylvia Plath’s life came to a premature and tragic end. Wilson, however, doesn’t dwell on this part of her life. Instead, he opts to explore a time before her tumultuous marriage to poet Ted Hughes and dive into her earlier relationships and experiences. Wilson deploys information from Plath’s diaries for his account, making it altogether more intimate.
Hidden Figures: The American Dream & the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race — Margot Lee Shetterly
This title leaves no information concealed, and quite rightly so. Shetterly’s ode to NASA’s so-called “human computers” is thoroughly inspiring and tragic all at once; it chronicles the little-known African-American female mathematicians who were key to winning the space race, thanks to their tireless work calculating the flight paths for John Glenn’s launch into orbit, against a backdrop of the Civil Rights movement and gender discrimination. So inspiring was this biography that it was brought to the big screen, garnering an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks — Rebecca Skloot
This extraordinary tale details the story of the fairly ordinary Henrietta Lacks, a tobacco farmer who unwittingly played one of the most important roles in modern medicine. After her cells were used without her knowledge, a string of ground-breaking accomplishments in the medical world began taking place, most notably the polio vaccine. Incredibly, the cells are still alive today and being bought and sold over six decades after Lacks died.
Notorious RBG: The Life & Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg — Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik
In what started as a meme posted to Tumblr, Carmon and Knizhnik decided to put pen to paper to tell the story of globally-adored Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a feminist icon who devoted her life to battling gender inequality in the workplace and impacted the U.S. constitution.