Still I Rise: The Persistence of Phenomenal Women by Marlene Wagman-Gellar

Image obtained from mango.bz.

            I was sent Still I Rise by its publishing house, Mango Publishing, with zero promise of a review on my part.  My plan was to read the book and then decide whether or not to write a review, as I do with all the other things I have written about.  What I found as I was reading, was a book that I truly believe others need to experience for themselves.  It is full of stories about women that should be learned about and remembered.  While I found all of these women’s stories interesting, there was one that stuck in my mind in particular.    

           The main focus of this book is stories of women who struggled through hard times yet managed to succeed anyways.  As I had already read Behind Every Great Man, another of Ms. Wagman-Gellar’s books, I found at least one woman I had already read about.  Others included in this book I had never heard of, while some I did, and I was very happy to learn more.  One woman I was particularly happy to see included was Hattie McDaniel.  I had read about Ms. McDaniel and learned some things about her from the book Backwards and in Heels.  Still I Rise went further into Ms. McDaniel’s life and the struggles she was forced to face throughout it.  Some things I read about were shocking, yet not shocking all at the same time.  One example of this is when the neighborhood Ms. McDaniel was living in tried to kick her out because of the color of her skin.  It did not matter that she had achieved fame, they wanted her out.  It is horrifying to think that something like this happened, yet when you think of the time, it is not surprising.  Sadly, I would not be surprised if this type of thing still sometimes happened today.  Fortunately for Ms. McDaniel, she always had at least one person standing by her side.  That person was Clark Gable who kept going to great lengths for Ms. McDaniel and other African Americans to get treated fairly not only in the studios but in the world.  As strong of a person as Ms. McDaniel was, she may have appreciated having more people like him around.

                Still I Rise also covers the possibly more well-known story of J.K. Rowling.  It was interesting to learn that she had actually come up with the plot of Harry Potter long before she ever began to write it.  Life circumstances forced her to put off his full creation until later, but she still did, and look at the success Harry Potter is now.  Something else I learned about was how many of the people and things in Harry Potter are taken either directly from Ms. Rowling’s life or inspired by it.  I’m now intrigued to read all the Harry Potter books again and see how many of these connections I can find.  It also leads me to wonder what other details in the books may be personal to the author.

                While I enjoyed these stories, along with others such as Hellen Keller, Carrie Fisher, and Claudette Colvin (the young woman who refused to move on the bus before Rosa Parks’s historic refusal), the story that stuck out the most to me was that of Mildred Jeter.  As a teenager, Ms. Jeter fell in love with a man named Richard Loving.  For years they spent time together until the day came when Ms. Jeter found out she was pregnant.  Ms. Jeter and Mr. Loving decided to get married, but there was a problem.  Ms. Jeter and Mr. Loving were of different races.  In Virginia, where they lived, an inter-racial marriage was against the law.  Ms. Jeter and Mr. Loving managed to get married outside of Virginia, but they were not able to live in peace.  The police in their hometown hauled them to jail, leading the Lovings on a legal journey in pursuit of being allowed to be happily married wherever they went.

                For many reasons this story stuck out to me (one being the sad, early death of Ms. Loving’s husband), but the main reason was because the battle the Lovings fought is one we’re still fighting today.  The group of people fighting for their marriage rights may have changed (and in some places it hasn’t), but the fight is still the same: to be able to love and marry the one you want.  It’s funny how some of the arguments used in the Lovings’s time are still being used today.  In so many ways, times have not changed.

                As much as I enjoyed the stories about these women, there was one thing that really bothered me.  Nearly, if not all, of the chapters had some version of “still rise” somewhere in the chapter.  For me that was far overdone.  It was not irritating enough, however, to lead me to putting the book down.  The women and their stories were far too interesting, and important, for me to do that.