The Women's Great Lakes Reader

Women lighthouse keepers, fur traders, cooks on sailing vessels, missionaries, and fearless travelers all wrote of their lives on the Great Lakes, both publicly and in quiet testimonies such as letters, logbooks, and diaries. Their narratives, which span the centuries from 1789 to the present, are now collected in this anthology. Compiled in response to historical accounts primarily from white men, this collection begins with American Indian myths and stories and continues through writings by women pioneers and travelers. More than three dozen selections of autobiography, fiction, newspaper accounts, and poetry chronicle the real danger and the physical and mental challenges of living in the environment of the Great Lakes.

Women lighthouse keepers, fur traders, cooks on sailing vessels, missionaries, and fearless travelers all wrote of their lives on the Great Lakes, both publicly and in quiet testimonies such as letters, logbooks, and diaries. Their narratives, which span the centuries from 1789 to the present, are now collected in this anthology. Compiled in response to historical accounts primarily from white men, this collection begins with American Indian myths and stories and continues through writings by women pioneers and travelers. More than three dozen selections of autobiography, fiction, newspaper accounts, and poetry chronicle the real danger and the physical and mental challenges of living in the environment of the Great Lakes.

Internet Book Watch

The Women's Great Lakes Reader is an impressive, informative, superbly presented contribution to women's studies, native American studies, regional and Midwestern history studies. Victoria Brehm has assembled an outstanding contributors writing on the theme of women's roles in the cultures, development, and history of the Great Lakes region of the American Midwest organized into five major sections: Anishinaabeg: The First Peoples of the Lakes; Women Pioneers on the Frontier; Women Travelers on the Lakes; Women's Work; and Women's Lives, Women's Lakes. Of special note is Judith Minty's "The North Woods" (1981) which serves admirably as an introduction to the wealth of informative, insightful, and engaging commentaries comprising The Women's Great Lakes Reader which make this work a seminal contribution for personal and academic studies.

Victoria Brehm is a professor of American literature and the author of Sweetwater, Storms, and Spirits: Stories of the Great Lakes. She is a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. She lives in Tustin, Michigan.