What do Sarah Whitman, a writer and Edgar Allan Poe’s former lover, military historian Anne Kinsolving Brown, RISD founder Helen Metcalf and women’s education advocate Sarah Doyle have in common? They all helped to shape state history, and their contributions are honored in the new book “Remarkable Women of Rhode Island” by Russell DeSimone and Frank Grzyb.
DeSimone and Grzyb gave a book talk and signing at the Providence Public Library Thursday afternoon.
Though Rhode Island is small, the volitions and achievements of women in its history of education, literature, art and advocacy surpass its size.
Instead of spending entire chapters on just a few women, the book strives to shed light on a plethora of “remarkable women” that history has not yet sufficiently recognized. The authors made great endeavors to search for bits and pieces to identify these figures: Activists and reformists, writers and artists, princesses and politicians, educators, religious leaders and athletes all make an appearance in the book’s pages, DeSimone told The Herald.
“We live in a society that’s still male-oriented. Women are often overlooked or omitted in the histories,” he said of his motive for writing the book.
DeSimone and Grzyb have known each other for more than 30 years.
“One day at breakfast, Frank brought up the idea of collaborating on a book together, and that’s the genesis of how the book came to be,” DeSimone said, adding that one of his key interests was the role women played in the Dorr Rebellion, an unsuccessful suffrage movement that took place in 1841. Grzyb’s expertise, on the other hand, lies in more recent history.
With their combined backgrounds, the pair did not find writing the book a difficult task, Grzyb said, adding that it essentially wrote itself — that is, once they collected enough research on the multitude of individuals they wanted to highlight.
“It became evident that we cannot go into great detail of any one person, but we certainly want to ensure we cover all of the centuries, 17th through the 20th, Native Americans, women of color,” he said. He hopes to inspire readers to conduct independent research on figures they find particularly compelling, he added.
Though the book focuses on Rhode Island residents, they are no more or less significant than any other notable female historical figures around the world, DeSimone said, though he added that Rhode Island’s history of religious dissent may have spurred some female reformists.
“Each of these ladies made incremental impacts on how things were perceived, and all of their effort has paved the way for the women of today,” DeSimone said. For “someone like me who has lived through seven decades, I see the progress.”
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