International Women’s Day 2023

 

8 nonfiction books

by and about Australian Women

to explore

{Covers linked to Goodreads}

 

Songspirals: Sharing women’s wisdom of Country through songlines by Gay’wu Group of Women

‘We want you to come with us on our journey, our journey of songspirals. Songspirals are the essence of people in this land, the essence of every clan. We belong to the land and it belongs to us. We sing to the land, sing about the land. We are that land. It sings to us.’

 

Truganini by Cassandra Pybus

The haunting story of the extraordinary Aboriginal woman behind the myth of ‘the last Tasmanian Aborigine’.

 

A Cargo of Women: Susannah Watson and the Convicts of the Princess Royal by Babette Smith

Babette Smith reconstructs the lives of the women from the Princess Royal from fragments of information in shipping lists, official records, newspapers and court transcripts.

 

Yassmin’s Story by Yassmin Abdel-Magied

Born in the Sudan, Yassmin and her parents moved to Brisbane when she was two, and she has been tackling barriers ever since. At 16 she founded Youth Without Borders, an organization focused on helping young people to work for positive change in their communities. In 2007 she was named Young Australian Muslim of the Year and in 2010 Young Queenslander of the Year. In 2011 Yassmin graduated with a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering (First Class Honours) and in 2012 she was named Young Leader of the Year in the Australian Financial Review and Westpac’s inaugural 100 Women of Influence Awards, as well as an InStyle cultural leader and a Marie Claire woman of the future.

 

Reckoning: A Memoir by Magda Szubanski

Heartbreaking, joyous, traumatic, intimate and revelatory, Reckoning is the book where Magda Szubanski, one of Australia’s most beloved performers, tells her story.

 

Grace Tame: The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner by Grace Tame

In 2021 Grace stepped squarely into the public eye as the Australian of the Year, and was the catalyst for a tidal wave of conversation and action.

 

Women of a Certain Rage Edited by Liz Byrski

This book is the result of what happened when Liz Byrski asked 20 Australian women from widely different backgrounds, races, beliefs and identities to take up the challenge of writing about rage.

 

Not Now, Not Ever Ten years on from the misogyny speech Edited by Julia Gillard

On 9 October 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard stood up and proceeded to make all present in Parliament House that day pay attention – and left many of them squirming in their seats. The incisive ‘misogyny speech’, as her words came to be known, continues to energise and motivate women who need to stare down sexism and misogyny in their own lives.

 

You’re Doing it Wrong: A History of Bad & Bonkers Advice to Women by Kaz Cooke

You’re Doing it Wrong is an outrageous tour through the centuries of bonkers and bad advice handed down and foisted upon women, told as only Kaz Cooke can – with humour and rage, intelligence and wit.

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