Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation

by Tiya Miles Narrated by Janina Edwards

Overview

Harriet Tubman, forced to labor outdoors on a Maryland plantation, learned from the land a terrain for escape. Louisa May Alcott ran wild, eluding gendered expectations in New England. The Indigenous women's basketball team from Fort Shaw, Montana, recaptured a sense of pride in physical prowess as they trounced the white teams of the 1904 World's Fair. Celebrating women like these who acted on their confidence outdoors, Wild Girls brings new context to misunderstood icons like Sacagawea and Pocahontas, and to underappreciated figures like Native American activist writer Zitkála-¿á, farmworkers' champion Dolores Huerta, and labor and Civil Rights organizer Grace Lee Boggs.



This work of history puts girls of all races-and the landscapes they loved-at center stage and reveals the impact of the outdoors on women's independence, resourcefulness, and vision. For these trailblazing women of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, navigating the woods, following the stars, playing sports, and taking to the streets in peaceful protest were not only joyful pursuits, but also techniques to resist assimilation, racism, and sexism. Lyrically written and full of archival discoveries, Wild Girls evokes landscapes as richly as the girls who roamed in them-and argues for equal access to outdoor spaces for young women of every race and class today.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Beautiful.… If you, like Miles, were once a girl who found an expansive sense of wonder and possibility in wild spaces, this is a book to savor."— BookPage, starred review

"The stories in Wild Girls…quietly expand the idea of what it means to be an outdoors person."— Gloria Liu Outside

"A book that urges us to see nature—and also girls—differently. Best of all, it urges us to see and celebrate them together."— Craig Fehrman Boston Globe

"A moving meditation on race, history, and possibility; an enticing invitation to seek renewal in green spaces; a rousing exhortation to women and girls to claim freedom in the wild. Tiya Miles offers us a rhapsodic account of nature as a respite from, and remedy for, the failings of society and culture."— Nicole Eustace, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America

"A sensitive examination of the lives of women—primarily Black and Native American—for whom the natural world served as an ‘imagination station and training ground.’ …A fresh, graceful contribution to women’s history."— Kirkus Reviews

"Evocative and unique.… [A]n inventive take on what inspired people to challenge norms and agitate for change."— Publishers Weekly, starred review

"The personal stories range from intriguing to downright inspiring—the Native American players of the Fort Shaw basketball team deserve a movie!—but it is the author’s insatiable curiosity and obvious affection for her subjects that will most captivate readers. So many fascinating women of different races are included in this little book. It’s a true treasure! This gem is an obvious choice for teens."— Booklist

"Wild Girls invites readers on a crucial journey of insight and humanity, reminding us how each life—whether enslaved or dispossessed, marginalized or privileged—takes place on this Earth. This reckoning with their pasts illuminates possibilities for our future."— Lauret Savoy, author of Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape

"A lovingly rendered and rigorously researched book on girls from our past, from Harriet Tubman and Louisa May Alcott to Delores Huerta and Octavia Butler, who saw possibility in the soil, the trees, the water, and the stars, despite the limitations and humiliations placed on them by others. These stories are a call to action, a reminder that if we lose our way, Nature is a bridge. I, for one, am rejuvenated. What a gift."— Carolyn Finney, author of Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors

"How did women, especially African American and Indigenous women in the United States, find freedom in the face of slavery, repression, domesticity, assimilation, trauma, and fear? Through incredible storytelling and study, Tiya Miles uncovers how girls and women learned new skills and, ultimately, empowerment and peace through their experiences in the natural world."— Brenda J. Child, author of My Grandfather’s Knocking Sticks: Ojibwe Family Life and Labor on the Reservation

"With delights and surprises at every turn, Wild Girls has given me a new pantheon of heroes to admire and emulate."— Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Encounters at the Heart of the World

Kirkus Reviews

2023-06-02
How women discovered themselves in nature.

Harvard historian Miles, a MacArthur fellow and National Book Award winner for All That She Carried, offers a sensitive examination of the lives of women—primarily Black and Native American—for whom the natural world served as an “imagination station and training ground.” For women such as escaped slave Harriet Tubman, Indigenous explorer Sacagawea, and science fiction writer Octavia Butler, the natural world provided “a space to discover who they were and what they were capable of.” Tubman, who labored largely in fields, farms, and forests, learned how “to listen to, forage, and navigate the woods,” skills that enabled her to successfully liberate dozens of slaves. Similarly, Harriet Jacobs, who was formerly enslaved, saw “trees and woods as places of relief, restoration, secrecy, and refuge.” For Tubman, Jacobs, and white abolitionist Laura Smith Haviland, “nature’s classroom” made them acutely aware of societal and political subjugation and oppression. Miles connects love of nature with a celebration of “wild freedom” in the works of Louisa May Alcott, a self-proclaimed tomboy who loved to romp in the woods, escaping the strictures of Victorian girlhood; and in the writings of Native American poet Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, for whom the “uncomfortable realities of colonial intimacies” underlay her lyrical depictions of beloved landscapes. When Native American children were forcibly sent to government boarding schools, wrenched from their natural surroundings, many rebelled against the cultural and physical confinement they endured. Among 20th-century women whose lives were indelibly shaped by their outdoor experiences, Miles includes Chinese American activist Grace Lee Boggs and Mexican American labor activist Dolores Huerta. The author’s own reverence for nature intensified during the pandemic, when her backyard became a place of solace and beauty. Acknowledging the privilege that affords her this space for herself and her family, she makes a compelling plea for fostering “outside equity” to allow everyone to partake of nature’s gifts.

A fresh, graceful contribution to women’s history.

2024 NEIBA New England Book Award, Short-listed

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159854278
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	09/19/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

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