Monday, May 21, 2007

Los Angeles Women I Find Inspiring

I'm going back on Friday to the Studio for Southern California History to see their exhibit on
Los Angeles women's history and I want to add some names of women I find inspiring to their timeline of Los Angeles women's history:

1. Ina Coolbrith was a niece of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith who moved to Los Angeles
in 1850s where she published poetry in Los Angeles Star and California Home Journal establishing literary career before she was 20. She moved to San Francisco and became first important woman poet in California in late 19th century.

2 Mary Austin- During the late 19th century writer she trained herself as a naturalist of Southern California writing the first great book about the Southern California deserts Land of Little Rain in 1903 and was a New Woman of the turn of the century.

3. Rose Pesotta-She was an organizer for International Ladies Garment Worker's Union who organized the first large-scale strike of Mexican-American and Jewish garment workers in 1933 to kick off the decade of unionizing in Los Angeles in a city which was notoriously anti-union.

3. Alice McGrath - She was a young Jewish-American woman who during World War II was
dedicated activist in the fight to free the Chicanos falsely imprisoned in Sleepy Lagoon; she
inspired the role of the young Jewish woman activist in the play and movie Zoot Suit

4. Ann Stanford was a poet and long-time English professor at California State University at Northridge. During the 1960s and 1970s she published numerous books of her own poetry as well published first anthology of women's poetry in English from medieval times to the 1970s.

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