Little Leaders Visionary Women Around the World

Description

Little Leaders

Visionary Women Around the World

Vashti Harrison

(Penguin Random House)

Little Leaders Visionary Women Around the World is the latest addition to Vashti Harrison’s biographical series. The first woman she profiles is Fatima Al-Fihri who lived in what is now Morocco during the ninth century. She and her sister used their education and their inheritance ‘to help their community‘. What Fatima created remains today.

We travel through continents, history and occupations to realise the legacy of this selection of little leaders. There are trail blazing researchers like Marie Curie and Chien-Shung Wu, who created the Wu Experiment to test subatomic particles. Furthermore, there are women who beat down doors in arts and culture, like Peggy Guggenheim, Mary Blair and Thancoupie Gloria Fletcher, from Australia.

It seems as though each subject faced and worked through adversity, ignorance and disbelief. Thereafter, people as esteemed as Zaha Hadid of The World is Not a Rectangle or Notting Hill carnival creator Claudia Jones, proved indefatigable.

What other figures might be considered? It seems as though Vashti Harrison considers this question too for she includes a postscript of other leaders, ahead of a glossary of terms. Altogether, Little Leaders Visionary Women Around the World is a bold, brave and motivating book that stirs and informs meaningfully.