• Miriam Makeba

    Miriam Makeba

    Miriam Makeba (1932-2008), the beloved South African legend, was famous the world as "Mama Africa" for her music and her courageous opposition to apartheid. Throughout her long career Miriam was ...

  • Murasaki Shikibu

    Murasaki Shikibu

    Murasaki Shikibu (ca. 973-1014) was one of the world's great literary geniuses. She wrote the first novel in history---The Tale of Genji---and with it created not only a timeless masterpiece of ...

  • Phillis Wheatley

    Phillis Wheatley

    Some people are just born geniuses. Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) was kidnapped from Senegal and sold into slavery at the age of seven or eight, eventually landing up with the Wheatley family of ...

  • Sappho

    Sappho

    Sappho (ca. 620-570 BCE) was the world's first great love poet, composing lyrics of astonishing power and immediacy. The Greeks considered her the greatest of all the lyric poets; it's a tragedy ...

  • Sojourner Truth

    Sojourner Truth

    Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) was one of America's greatest heroines. Born into slavery in New York, she became a powerful voice for abolition and women's rights. Her most famous ...

  • Sor Juana

    Sor Juana

    In the relentlessly patriarchal society of New Spain, there was no place for a girl genius. Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648–1695) was a prodigy: she could read and write by the age of three, was ...

  • Susan B. Anthony

    Susan B. Anthony

    Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) devoted her life to the cause of women's suffrage, toiling for over 50 years in the face of incredible opposition (not to mention ridicule). As the de facto "Napoleon" ...

  • Themistoclea

    Themistoclea

    The Greeks considered Pythagoras the "father of philosophy." He taught a system of natural science, mathematics, and ethics that profoundly influenced the Western canon. Ah, but who taught ...