Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (c. 1844 – October 17, 1891) was a Northern Paiute author, activist (lecturer) and educator (school organizer). Her maiden name is Winnemucca. Her Northern Paiute name was Thocmentony, also spelled Tocmetone, which translates as “Shell Flower.”

At 27, Sarah began working in the Bureau of Indian Affairs at Fort McDermitt in 1871 as an interpreter.

Subsequently, Winnemucca became an advocate for the rights of Native Americans, traveling across the US to tell Anglo-Americans about the plight of her people. When the Paiute were interned in a concentration camp at Yakima, Washington after the Bannock War, she traveled to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress and the executive branch for their release. She also served US forces as a messenger, interpreter, and guide, and as a teacher for imprisoned Native Americans.

Winnemucca published Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883), a book that is both a memoir and history of her people during their first 40 years of contact with European Americans. It is considered the “first known autobiography written by a Native American woman.” Anthropologist Omer Stewart described it as “one of the first and one of the most enduring ethnohistorical books written by an American Indian,” frequently cited by scholars. Following the publication of the book, Winnemucca toured the Eastern United States, giving lectures about her people in New England, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. She returned to the West, founding a private school for Native American children in Lovelock, Nevada.

-Wikipedia

Carol Chomsky was a prolific linguist and known for her research and development of childhood language and reading. She is considered a hero in the world of language and has earned a place in Women’s History! Carol Doris Schatz was born in Philadelphia on July 1, 1930. She married Noam Chomsky in 1949, the two having known each other since she was five years old and he was seven. Her mother had been a teacher at a Hebrew school where his father was the principal. She was awarded a bachelor’s degree in French from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951.

She earned a doctoral degree in linguistics from Harvard University in 1968, having attended the school in order to ensure that she would be able to make a living in the event that her husband would be sent to jail for his active opposition to the Vietnam War.

Chomsky’s best-known book is The Acquisition of Syntax in Children From 5 to 10 (1969). The book investigated how children develop an understanding of the underlying grammatical structure of their native language, as well as how they use this skill to interpret sentences of increasing complexity as they get older. Despite earlier scientific beliefs that children complete their acquisition of syntax by the age of five, Chomsky’s research showed that children continue to develop the skills needed to understand complex constructions beyond that age.

As part of her research to understand how children develop the ability to read, she developed a method in the late 1970s called repeated reading, in which children would read a text silently while a recording of the text was played. The child would repeat the process until the text could be read fluently without the tape. Research showed that four readings accompanied by a recording could be enough to provide added reading fluency for most children. More than 100 studies have been performed on the technique, with most finding statistically significant improvements in reading speed and word recognition.

-Wikipedia

The Acquisition of Syntax in Children from 5 to 10 by Carol Chomsky

Inside Lebanon: Journey to a Shattered Land with Noam and Carol Chomsky, Edited by Assaf Kfoury

Today is the end of Black History Month and tomorrow begins Women’s History Month. We decided to celebrate both of these important  months by creating a list of Black Women authors we love and want to share with you. Pulitzer prize winners, Nobel Prize winners, and a first lady are on this list of works.  If you do not already have these books in your library, we have provided a link after each author to get a copy of your own, or listen to the book on Audible.

Happy reading!

Zora Neale Hurston– “Tell my Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica” (1938)

A collection of folktales and documenting African based language and religions, such as Voodoo and it’s American Couterpart: Hoodoo. buy ‘Tell My Horse’ on Amazon

Alice Walker– “The Color Purple” (1982)

Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is left behind without her best friend and confidante, married off to an older suitor, and sentenced to a life alone with a harsh and brutal husband.

In an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear, Celie begins writing letters directly to God. The letters, spanning 20 years, record a journey of self-discovery and empowerment guided by the light of a few strong women. She meets Shug Avery, her husband’s mistress and a jazz singer with a zest for life, and her stepson’s wife, Sophia, who challenges her to fight for independence. And though the many letters from Celie’s sister are hidden by her husband, Nettie’s unwavering support will prove to be the most breathtaking of all. buy “The Color Purple” on Amazon or listen on Audible

Nicola Yoon– “The Sun is also a Star” (2016) We all love a YA novel, and this is where you can get your fix. Fall in love with a story of two teenagers, from vastly different backgrounds, as they fall in love, just as their worlds are falling apart, as Natasha’s family faced deportation to Jamaica.  Buy this book on Amazon or listen on Audible

Toni Morrison– “Song of Solomon” (1977); Also read “Beloved” and “The Bluest Eyes” Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rust belt city to the place of his family’s origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world. Toni Morrison is also a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1988) for Beloved and  Nobel Prize for Literature (1993).  Buy on Amazon or listen on Audible

Michelle Obama– “The Light we Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times” (2022) Also see Becoming (2018)  There may be no tidy solutions or pithy answers to life’s big challenges, but Michelle Obama believes that we can all locate and lean on a set of tools to help us better navigate change and remain steady within flux. In The Light We Carry, she opens a frank and honest dialogue with listeners, considering the questions many of us wrestle with: How do we build enduring and honest relationships? How can we discover strength and community inside our differences? What tools do we use to address feelings of self-doubt or helplessness? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much? Buy “The Light We Carry” on Amazon or listen on Audible