Our Lives
Girls’ and Women’s Stories Across Two Millennia
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Excerpts from ''Our Lives: Girls and Women Across Two Millennia'' ''Evenings will be full of socializing and rest. When you’re old enough I’ll tell you every poem and song I know and you, in turn, will teach your own children. You’ll run your own house someday, and people will compliment your fair skin, your beautiful scent, the way you play music or sing. But these things are costly. Every night before you sleep you’ll put the sweat of sheep’s wool on your face because it makes your skin look youthful.'' Gaia Valeria, Pompeii, circa 70 C.E. ''I suppose this web of tributes is what men like your master, the Bede, call Englishness, and seek to tell us as a story of a people. But beyond these dams, I don't really know what awaits. I know best what happens in the walls of my house, between the posts of my home, which is no longer than five men lying flat lengthwise and three wide. This is the ground where my life takes place, here, and on the hide of land we farm.'' Eadburg, around 780 ''Life became harder once she married. Life becomes harder for everyone after marriage – suddenly there are mouths to feed and others to take care of, others that you would give all of yourself for. She used to love to dance, to perform in the community rituals and gatherings, to dance around the fires and feel the beat of the drums pulsing through her body. Dum-de-dum dum, dum-de- dum dum – oh was that it? Or was it dum dum de-dum dum de, dum dum de-dum dum de?'' Adjoa, West Africa, around 1650.
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About the Book
A series of stories that provide a picture of struggle and strength in many different societies.
What makes history live? Stories about individuals who take us to places we have not been.
Learning about the lives of girls and women over a lengthy period of time will stimulate discussion about those lives as well as their counterparts today.
Each life lived has a story we can learn from. In Our Lives: Girls’ and Women’s Stories Across Two Millennia, editor John Connolly offers ten short fiction stories penned by young writers that provide pictures of the struggle and strength of girls and women in many different societies.
These stories may take us to unfamiliar places, as the girls’ and women’s images come to life through original sketches. “Hoski” tells the story of a young Navajo girl living in the period around 1400 in what is now the United States; it explores her relationship with her grandmother and explains why she needs to be strong. “Gaia Valeria” introduces Gaia, a fifteen-year-old from a wealthy family living in Pompeii during the Roman Empire, and compares her life with that of her slave. “The Diary of Zhang Lihua” shares excerpts from the diary of a young woman living in northern China near the end of the sixth century as she describes her family and political changes taking place at that time.
Making history come alive, Our Lives is intended to stimulate discussion about the lives of girls and women and their struggles and triumphs of yesteryear and what it means to today’s society.
About the Author
John Connolly has taught in Canada, Papua New Guinea, and Mali. He has also been involved in education as a school board trustee and chair. With Storyteller Documentary Films, Connolly produced a video about perception. He and his wife, Nathalie O’Neil, live in Ottawa, Canada.