The Women I Think About at Night: Traveling the Paths of My Heroes

by Mia Kankimïki, Douglas Robinson (Translator)

Overview

In The Women I Think About at Night, Mia Kankimäki blends travelogue, memoir, and biography as she recounts her enchanting travels in Japan, Kenya, and Italy while retracing the steps of ten remarkable female pioneers from history.

What can a forty-something childless woman do? Bored with her life and feeling stuck, Mia Kankimäki leaves her job, sells her apartment, and decides to travel the world, following the paths of the female explorers and artists from history who have long inspired her. She flies to Tanzania and then to Kenya to see where Karen Blixen—of Out of Africa—fame lived in the 1920s. In Japan, Mia attempts to cure her depression while researching Yayoi Kusama, the contemporary artist who has voluntarily lived in a psychiatric hospital for decades. In Italy, Mia spends her days looking for the works of forgotten Renaissance women painters of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and finally finds her heroines in the portraits of Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, and Artemisia Gentileschi. If these women could make it in the world hundreds of years ago, why can’t Mia?

The Women I Think About at Night is part travelogue and part thrilling exploration of the lost women adventurers of history who defied expectations in order to see—and change—the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982129194
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	11/10/2020
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Mia Kankimäki has worked with books all her life: she has a master’s degree in comparative literature from the University of Helsinki, and she has worked as a copywriter and editor at various publishing houses. Her travels in Tanzania, Kenya, Italy, and Japan in the footsteps of inspirational, historical female figures inspired her book The Women I Think About at Night. When not traveling for her next book project, Mia Kankimäki lives in Helsinki, Finland.

Read an Excerpt

I. Night Women: A Confession I Night Women: A Confession
I’m M. I’m forty-three years old. On countless nights over the years I’ve thought about women—and it has nothing at all to do with sex.

I’ve thought about women on those sleepless nights when my life, my love, or my attitude is skewed, and it seems there is no end to the dark night of my soul. On those nights I have gathered an invisible honor guard of historical women, guardian angels to lead the way.

The lives of these inspiring night women have not followed traditional paths. They have transgressed boundaries and expectations. Many of them are artists and writers, people doing lonely, introverted work. Most have not had families or children, and their relationships with men have been unconventional. Many have traveled in or moved to foreign countries, and made massive life changes at an advanced age. Some have lived with their mothers their entire lives; some have suffered from diseases and mental disorders; but all of them have followed their passions and made their own choices. These exemplary women have been my plan B—the one I’ll adopt if everything else goes to hell.

One of the women is Sei Shonagon, a writer and court lady who lived a thousand years ago in Kyoto, about whom I wrote my first book. But there are many others. Some nights I lie awake thinking about Frida Kahlo, whose biography I read when I was eighteen. It transformed how I thought about womanhood. Other nights I think about Georgia O’Keeffe, who wound up alone in the New Mexico desert painting buffalo skulls and making her first trip around the world when she was in her seventies. I think about Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese woman who, deciding to become an artist, wrote to Georgia O’Keeffe to ask her advice, and later, after shaking up the New York art world in the sixties, returned to Tokyo and asked to be allowed to live in a psychiatric hospital. I think of Karen Blixen, who followed her husband to Africa and ended up running a farm on her own. I think of Jane Austen, who, though she lived unmarried in her parents’ attic in the English countryside, transformed the art of the novel. I think of the poet-artist Ema Saiko, who lived in Japan in the Edo period. It is her calm that finally brings sleep to the dark night of my soul.

I wonder where these women found their courage. What advice would they give me, if we could meet? And above all: Could I go exploring in their footsteps?

I’ve been on that journey for some time now. And the amazing thing is that I keep finding more and more forgotten night women who churn up my imagination, an ever-expanding network of women who lived in different centuries and different corners of the world, slicing the waves through my brain. They are Marys, Karens, Idas, Nellies, Marthas, Alexines, Sofonisbas, Battistas—they are writers, artists, explorers, depressed spinsters, war correspondents, wives of Renaissance aristocrats.

They are the women I think about at night. At first I thought about them on sleepless nights, in search of strength, inspiration, and purpose for my life; nowanights I stay up specially to think about them, my pulse pounding for them and with them. Why have they come to me, clung to me, swept me up in their lives? Why have I surrounded my desk with their faces? Why do books about them pile ever higher on my floor? Why do I collect facts about them like talismans?

Let me start at the beginning, one picture at a time.

But first let me pack my bag. I have a flight leaving soon.

Table of Contents

I Night Women: A Confession 1

Africa

II White Fog, Winter-Spring 6

Karen Blixen 13

III Tanzania-Kenya, May 18

Explorers

IV Kallio-Vihti, Summer 136

Isabella Bird 144

Ida Pfeiffer 172

Mary Kingsley 192

V Kyoto, September 219

Alexandra David-Neel 240

Nellie Bly 252

Top 3 Worst Packers 259

Artists

VI Florence, November 268

Sofonisba Anguissola 291

Lavinia Fontana 304

Artemisia Gentileschi 316

VII Kallio-Mazzano, Winter-Spring 338

VIII Rome-Bologna-Florence revisited 356

IX Normandy, September 364

Yayoi Kusama 371

X Magic Mountain 388

Acknowledgments 397

Bibliography 401

Permissions 407

Editorial Reviews

04/20/2020

Finnish author Kankimäki profiles in this astute, entertaining work 10 daring female writers and artists who took risks in their quest toward fulfillment. At 42, Kankimäki sold her apartment and quit her job to travel and write (“I have no husband, no children... I’m free, but an outsider”), a decision she credits as being inspired by the women she writes about here. The women—all “guardian angels” who overcame sexism, oppression, or money woes to live out their dreams of traveling and creating art—include Italian Renaissance artist Artemisia Gentileschi, who was raped at 17 then became a renowned painter of “female-dominated” works; Isabella Bird, a depressed 19th-century British spinster who, at 40, revitalized her life when she took a trip around the world and wrote about her destinations; and Danish-born Karen Blixen, who started a coffee farm in British East Africa, lost her money, and moved in with her mother at 46 before writing the bestseller Out of Africa. Along the way, Kankimäki, a spirited narrator, highlights her own travels—to Tanzania, Italy, Japan—and shares advice (“Don’t give a damn what other people think”). This insightful book will appeal to adventure enthusiasts and be an inspiration for those with an eye on hitting their stride later in life. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"[A]stute, entertaining....This insightful book will appeal to adventure enthusiasts and be an inspiration for those with an eye on hitting their stride later in life."—Publisher's Weekly

"A thought-provoking blend of history, biography, women’s studies, and travelog, this should appeal to readers interested in any of these subjects, and those who love eclectic narrative nonfiction."—Library Journal

"[E]nlightening...[A] patchwork study of the many hurdles women artists faced—and still face."--Kirkus

"The stories are complicated and inspiring, and Kankimäki’s experience unwinding each one to help understand her own life reminds us of the power of using travel for self-discovery."—TRAVEL + LEISURE

From the Publisher

10/09/2020

Finnish author Kankimäki, in her first English translation, finds inspiration and strength from women throughout history who broke with the expected norms of their times. To understand unconventional women who were world travelers in the 1800s or professional artists during the Renaissance, the author travels to Italy, Japan, and a few African countries, reading their writings and biographies, viewing what she can find of their artwork, and experiencing the places they lived. The retelling of this journey is interspersed with vignettes from her life as a writer making her own way. As she learns about these accomplished women, Kankimäki writes them wry notes asking for help with her own travels; for example, while preparing for a prolonged trip, she asks journalist Nelly Bly, renowned for going around the world in 72 days with only a single suitcase as luggage, for advice on packing light. A poignant chapter reflects on the life of writer Alexandra David-Néel, most well known for her 1924 visit to Tibet. VERDICT A thought-provoking blend of history, biography, women's studies, and travelog, this should appeal to readers interested in any of these subjects, and those who love eclectic narrative nonfiction.—Laurie Unger Skinner, Highland Park P.L., IL

Library Journal

2020-07-31
A middle-aged writer sifts through history for other women whose lives matched her wanderlust.

“I’m forty-two. I have no husband, no children, no job,” Finnish author Kankimäki writes early in this hybrid of history, memoir, and feminist essay. She feels a sense of liberation in that status but also a pang of isolation that draws her to “night women” who blazed their own paths. First and most prominent among them is Karen Blixen, author of the 1937 classic Out of Africa. As part of her research into Blixen’s life, Kankimäki chronicles her journey in her footsteps in present-day Tanzania. Both strip away the author’s sense of romanticism; the present-day country is malarial, poverty-stricken, and overrun with tourists while Blixen suffered from sexism along with the case of syphilis her husband gave her. Still, Blixen’s stubbornness is inspiring. Kankimäki also writes pocket biographies of globe-trotters like Nellie Bly and Isabella Bird, who “seems like my doppelgänger: a fortyish, depressed spinster who suffers from headaches and insomnia, but who is fed up with the narrow confines in which her society has trapped her”; Alexandra David-Neel, who infiltrated the sacred Buddhist city of Lhasa; painters like Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana, who navigated the masculine world of 16th-century Italian art; and avant-garde Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who committed herself to a mental institution. Though the book has a clear organizing principle, its execution feels aimless. The livelier travelogues of Tanzania and Japan clang against the more studious essays on Bird and Bly, and the author’s explanations of her subjects’ difficulties make her concluding “night women's advice” feel thin or cloying (“be buoyant as hell”). Kankimäki’s repeated despairing that she’s unsure where she’s going with the book emphasizes the sense of disorder. However, the author engagingly maps her frustrations against those of her heroes, the “illnesses, self-doubts, weak moments…ordinary human reality” that echo her own.

An enlightening if dense and patchwork study of the many hurdles women artists faced—and still face.

Kirkus Reviews