For our April HerStory, we are heading out of the non-fiction we’ve been immersed in, and heading to some other-worldly reading with NK Jemisin, who is widely considered to be the best of the best in science fiction. She’s a best-seller, an award-winner (she won 3 Hugo awards in a row, for all three books from her Broken Earth Trilogy), and is a MacArthur Genius. She’s also an all-around badass who centers Black voices in her stories and stands up to racists in the sci-fi community. 

Jemisin became enamored with all things science fiction as a child, and consumed everything she could in the genre. As she visited her local library and read sci-fi book after sci-fi book, she realized that many had one thing in common: a decidedly white-centering slant. Even those writers of color who were enjoying success in the 1980s were encouraged to hide their race, so as to appear non-threatening (read: white) to the (white) reading public. Even the truly inimitable Octavia Butler was not immune to this pressure; as she began to read Butler, Jemisin had no clue she was a Black woman, as her book covers often featured images of white protagonists, even if those protagonists were people of color. All of this informed Jemisin’s writing, where Black voices are centered, most especially the Black woman. 

As her love of reading sci-fi grew, so did her belief that publishing it just wasn’t in the cards for a Black woman. She began publishing fan fiction (and still does, to this day, anonymously) while working as a career counselor in various colleges throughout the East and Midwest. She could not shake the need to write, and took a workshop in which she was encouraged to delve into short-story writing, and boy, are we glad she did!

Jemisin’s writing is considered both sci-fi and speculative fiction. Her world-building is full, brutal, and beautiful; it often comes to her in dreams. In talking about the protagonist of the Broken Earth Trilogy, you can imagine that she pulls her story from Jemisin. It’s a beautiful thought and has such powerful imagery. We decided to channel the gorgeous covers of her Hugo-winning trilogy, Broken Earth, for our Broken Earth colorway. The vibrant blues and greens, paired with the earthy browns and greys are so evocative of the world-building Jemisin is so good at; we hope you visit those worlds with us this month.

Books by NK Jemisin:

• The Broken Earth Trilogy
• How Long Until Black Future Month?
• The City We Became
• The Inheritance Trilogy
• The Killing Moon

Want more like this? Here are some other authors we suggest you read/listen to:

• Octavia Butler
• Nnedi Okorafor
• Tomi Adeyemi
• Ursula K. LeGuin
• Nalo Hopkinson
• Kameron Hurley

For our March HerStory, we are showcasing the truly incomparable bell hooks (born Gloria Jean Watkins). She adopted her maternal great-grandmother’s name as her pen name because her great-grandmother “was known for her snappy and bold tongue, which I greatly admired.” She wanted the focus of her work to be on the “substance of books, not who I am,” so chose not to capitalize her pen name.

bell hooks’ influence reaches into many different arenas, and she shared herself in many different ways: hooks was a professor, a featured speaker, a cultural critic, a filmmaker. The thread that weaves her works together is her intersectionality, and the central theme of all of her work is love:

“I believe wholeheartedly that the only way out of domination is love,” she told the philosopher George Yancy in an interview for The New York Times in 2015, “and the only way into really being able to connect with others, and to know how to be, is to be participating in every aspect of your life as a sacrament of love.”

No matter what part of her works you find yourself experiencing, you’ll see that love and intersectionality in practice: she wove themes of love, race, class, gender, art, history, sexuality, mass media, and feminism together into a truly inspiring whole. Whether reflecting on the influence geography has on self; exploring feelings on the American education system and its reliance on white supremacy and capitalism; and/or taking a deep-dive into what love truly means, hooks’ work frequently addressed these deep intersections that form the fabric of society.

The breadth of her teaching, the range of her interests, and the approachability of her work make us fall more in love with her with every experience. Whatever your interest, from children’s books to poetry to tracts on love, feminism, education, and pretty much everything in between, you’re sure to fall in love with bell hooks, too.

Our L-O-V-E colorway is an homage to bell hooks’ beloved Appalachia. We hope this earthy skein accompanies you as you explore hook’s work.

Books by bell hooks:

• The Love Trilogy: All About Love, Communion, & Salvation
• Ain’t I A Woman?
• Feminism is for Everybody
• Teaching to Transgress
• The Will to Change 
• Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place

Want more like this? Here are some other authors we suggest you read/listen to:

• Audre Lorde
• Angela Y. Davis
• Alice Walker
• Toni Morrison
• Roxane Gay

We hope you enjoy this HerStory Book Club as much as we have enjoyed putting it together. We envision an open-ended Book Club, with folks reading or listening to whichever book they’d like from each author’s If you’d like a spoiler of all of the authors we’ll be showcasing this year, check out our website: https://knittedwit.com/herstory-2022-authors/

It’s a new month, and that means a new HerStory recipient! This month, we are celebrating all things Ijeoma Oluo, writer, speaker, and self-professed internet yeller. 

Ijeoma Oluo is the author of two books that deep-dive into topics that are so important for us all to understand and confront. In her first book, So You Want to Talk About Race, she provides useful information for folks wanting to have constructive conversations about race in America. Her second book, Mediocre, focuses on the ways in which America has centered white men, and allowed them to flourish at the expense and on the backs of women and Black people, resulting in the America we currently live in.

She began to focus on writing in 2012, after the death of Trayvon Martin, who was the same age as Oluo’s oldest son when he was murdered. She pivoted her blog from food writing to musings on racism and living while Black in America, and that grew into more activism and advocacy, as well as writing for publications, from local to national to international. Her first published work was a now-out-of-print coloring book called The Badass Feminist Coloring Book (you know we tracked down a few copies on Ebay, and are looking forward to coloring as well as reading this month!) She is now a writer and speaker in high demand.

Oluo was named to the 2021 TIME 100 Next list and has twice been named to the Root 100. She received the 2018 Feminist Humanist Award and the 2020 Harvard Humanist of the Year Award from the American Humanist Association. She lives in Seattle with her partner and her youngest kiddo.

Ijeoma has devoted her life to the discussion of race and privilege in our society, and writes/internet yells for a lot of publications. She’s a mother, a partner, and gorgeously talented at make-up to boot (she recently created an Instagram account solely to share her looks, and we are in love with what she shares!).

Our Truth Teller colorway is inspired by one of these looks, and pays homage to all of the parts of Ijeoma that she shares with us. Because Black joy is something to celebrate just as much as success that comes with being a Truth Teller in America. 

Books by Ijeoma Oluo:

• So You Want To Talk About Race
• Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America 

Want more like this? Here are some other authors we suggest you read/listen to:

• Layla F. Saad
• Austin Channing Brown
• Michelle Alexander
• Mikki Kendall
• Liz Plank
• Patrisse Khan-Cullors
• Cathy Park Hong

We hope you enjoy this HerStory Book Club as much as we have enjoyed putting it together. We envision an open-ended Book Club, with folks reading or listening to whichever book they’d like from each author’s If you’d like a spoiler of all of the authors we’ll be showcasing this year, check out our website: https://knittedwit.com/herstory-2022-authors/

Ijeoma’s website: https://www.ijeomaoluo.com/

We could not be more excited about this year’s foray into books and authors for our 2022 HerStory! In the spirit of “treating ourselves” for January, we chose Phoebe Robinson, because everything about her is a real treat. Reading or (our preferred method) listening to her books, you feel like you’ve made a new best friend. Plus, she doesn’t shy away from important topics that affect her as a Black woman in America. 

Phoebe has written 3 books. She has done stand-up comedy (as half of Two Dope Queens); she has acted in films and TV shows; she has hosted numerous podcasts. She even did a high-in-the-trees ropes course with, of all people, Kevin Bacon, as a part of her Comedy Central Show, Doing the Most with Phoebe Robinson. 

In 2020, Phoebe launched Tiny Reparations, which began as a publishing imprint with the goal of highlighting and amplifying unique and diverse voices that not only reflect the current conversation but also push it forward. This inspired a production company as well. In Robinson’s own words, in creating the production company: “We’re focused on telling funny AF, complex AF, and honest AF stories that will make you cry laughing while also shining a light on things that make you go hmmm. #RememberThatSong #ShoutoutTo C+CMusicFactory.”

When reading Phoebe’s words on the page or on Instagram, when listening to one of her podcasts or the audio versions of her books, when spending time with this amazing woman, you are sure to be struck by how much joy she gets out of life, with how very tickled she is with whatever story she’s sharing with you. Listening to her is almost intimate: you truly feel as though you are sitting on your couch, glass of wine or mug of tea in hand, chatting and laughing and crying with a trusted friend, both of you snuggled under blankets with plenty of snacks at hand. 

As we were developing our colorway, which we’re calling Thirsty Thursdays, we wanted to honor the light Phoebe Robinson is in the world, and create something bright and fun. The name is an homage to the hilarious odes to hotties that she posts on Thursdays on Instagram; just try to read through one of them without guffawing out loud. 

Books by Phoebe Robinson:

• You Can’t Touch My Hair and Other Things I Still Have to Explain
• Everything is Trash, But It’s Okay
• Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes. 

Want more like this? Here are some other authors we suggest you read/listen to:

• Amber Ruffian
• Tina Fey
• Amy Poehler
• Samantha Irby
• Mindy Kaling

We hope you enjoy this HerStory Book Club as much as we have enjoyed putting it together. We envision an open-ended Book Club, with folks reading or listening to whichever book they’d like from each author’s If you’d like a spoiler of all of the authors we’ll be showcasing this year, check out our website: https://knittedwit.com/herstory-2022-authors/

Thanks so much! Let’s all fill our 2022 with reading and fabulous yarn inspired by fabulous women writers!

It is time for the final HerStory love letter of 2021, and, much like last year, we are using December to celebrate, not one woman, but a group of women we admire. With our The Future is Bright colorway, we are featuring young women working on climate change and community justice issues. We want to say thank you to these young women, and also ask that you support them in their endeavors, because, as Whitney Houston famously sang, “I believe the children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way…” We are fully prepared to follow these young women into a future that is hopefully on its way to healing the climate…

Amariyanna “Mari” Copeny, also known as Little Miss Flint, is a youth activist from Flint, Michigan. She is best known for raising awareness about the Flint water crisis and fundraising to support underprivileged children in her community and across the country.

Marina Anderson, a tribal leader for the Organized Village of Kasan on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, is known for advocating for protections of Indigenous culture and places, most particularly the Tongass National Forest (a temperate rain forest known as North America’s lungs) in Alaska. In 2020, protections were taken away from this vital rainforest, and Marina and other Indigenous activists have been fighting for this land.

Isra Hirsi from Minneapolis, MN, co-founded and served as the co-executive director of the U.S. Youth Climate Strike after organizing two nation-wide climate strikes in 2019. Hirsi is an advocate for intersectionality and diversity within the climate justice movement as well as in her daily life. She is the daughter of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

Vanessa Nakate is a climate activist from Kampala, Uganda. She was inspired to action by the realization that the livelihood and survival of her home country depends deeply on addressing climate change, and argues that African countries and communities should be compensated for the loss and damage arising from climate change that they are now suffering but that they are not very responsible for. She founded the Youth for Future Africa and the Rise Up Movement.

Greta Thunberg is a Swedish environmental activist who is known for challenging world leaders to take immediate action for climate change mitigation. She speaks truth to power, no holding back.

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These young women are all heroes of ours: smart, caring, and dedicated to making a difference in this world that we all share. There are many others that are doing good work, and that deserve our support. Even though sometimes the world seems heavy and hopeless, these women give us hope and remind us that The Future is Bright. We hope they (and the colorway we created to honor them) brightens up your days.

Our November HerStory recipient, Dr. Ildaura Murillo-Rohde, built her career around the idea that representation matters, and devoted herself to making space to encourage more people of hispanic descent to pursue careers in the medical field and work in hispanic communities. 

Born in Panama in 1920, Dr. Murillo-Rohde came to Texas to work as a community nurse, and realized how under-represented hispanic nurses were in the hispanic community. In the 1940s, there was a distinct dearth of cultural awareness in the medical field (not that there isn’t still a huge gap in medical cultural competence now, but it was much worse then). Dr. Murillo-Rohde realized how important it is for medical providers to understand not only a patient’s medical symptoms, but also how a patient’s culture might inform their understanding of and decisions about their medical care. She spent her career uplifting and encouraging hispanic medical professionals, and founded (and served as the first president of) the National Association of Hispanic Nurses in the late 1970s. 

Driven by a desire to create a world in which hispanic nurses were supported and plentiful enough for hispanic communities, Dr. Murillo-Rohde pursued degrees in psychiatric nursing, education, and administration, and was the first hispanic nurse to be awarded a PhD from New York University. She worked with the World Health Organization, the UN, AND she was even a tennis instructor! (Not at all germane to this letter, but we thought it was an interesting tidbit to add.) And at every step of her career, she was sure to work on representation and mentorship, with a focus on the concepts of community, respect, and cross-cultural competence in nursing. In 1994, she was named a Living Legend by the American Academy of Nursing.

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Our November colorway, Flowers in Your Hair, is an homage to Dr. Murillo-Rohde’s penchant for wearing an orchid in her hair at nursing conferences, and we found a lovely bright green and pink orchid to inspire us. We hope that Dr. Murillo-Rohde’s story inspires you, too.

US Senator Tammy Duckworth is our October HerStory recipient. She is a decorated veteran of the war in Iraq, and was the first disabled woman to hold a seat in the US House of Representatives, elected in 2012. She moved from the House to the Senate in 2016, and has spent her time in Congress fighting for both Veteran’s rights and Family Leave. When she had her second child in 2018, she became the first person to give birth while serving in Congress. She then proceeded to load her 10-day old baby up and bring her to the floor of Congress to cast an important vote on a presidential appointment that she opposed.  

Duckworth wanted more than anything to be a helicopter pilot, and even after being shot down and losing both legs and the full use of one arm in a rocket-propelled grenade attack, her recovery was focused on once again getting into the cockpit. A friendship with a sitting US Senator changed all of that. This senator encouraged her to run for office, and once it became clear that her injuries were going to preclude her from flying, she threw her hat in the ring on a congressional seat, which she lost. Undeterred, Tammy Duckworth took that loss as an opportunity, and her new life trajectory was begun. Shortly after, she was appointed as Director of Veterans Affairs in Illinois, and in 2012, she ran for a House seat, won that, and has been in politics ever since. Two causes she has consistently supported are family leave rights and veteran’s issues. 

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Like many of our HerStory recipients, Senator Duckworth was the first of many things: the first first female double amputee from the Iraq war; the first Thai American woman elected to Congress; the first person born in Thailand elected to Congress; the first woman with a disability elected to Congress; the first female double amputee in the Senate; and the first senator to give birth while in office. Her strength and commitment are an inspiration to us all, and our Veteran Affairs colorway, dyed to look like the camouflaged uniform she wore while in the service, pays homage to the armed forces, for which she continues to fight. Because she was the first in all of these ways, the path is clearer for others to make their own way.

Sonia Sotomayor, or Sonia from the Block, as our colorway that honors her is called, is the third woman, the first (and currently only) woman of color, and the first Latina to serve on the United States Supreme Court, having been nominated by Barack Obama in 2009. She grew up in the Bronx, in Puerto Rican neighborhoods, and self-identifies as Nuyorican (a portmanteau of New York and Puerto Rican, referring to members of the Puerto Rican diaspora in New York City). After initially dreaming of becoming a detective like her hero Nancy Drew, at 10 years old, Sotomayor changed gears and zeroed in on a future in law, inspired by Perry Mason.

Sotomayor received a full scholarship to Princeton, and her acceptance into the Ivy League school was assisted by affirmative action, in which she believes deeply. She has spoken up about the inherent biases in many standardized tests that make it harder for people from disadvantaged communities to thrive; affirmative action levels the playing field and gives opportunities to those with fewer advantages. During her time at Princeton, she advocated for the University to engage in more fair and inclusive hiring practices, and her work resulted in the first Latinx faculty members being hired, and more voice given to organizations centered around people of color, in particular Latinx folks. She became interested and invested in Critical Race Theory, which, unlike the culture war now raging would have you believe, is a body of legal scholarship that examines social, cultural, and legal issues primarily as they relate to race and racism in the United States. She closed out her college career by winning a top prize for undergraduates that honored both her work at school and her advocacy and volunteerism.

After law school, Sotomayor worked for a spell in the prosecutor’s office in NYC, and vigorously prosecuted violent crime. She deepened her commitment to community involvement as well, fighting for the rights of the disadvantaged and disenfranchised in her post-prosecutorial career first as a lawyer and then as a judge. As she rose through the judicial ranks, she became known as a strict but fair jurist. She’s also the judge who saved baseball in the mid-1990s (her injunction against the MLB effectively restarted the stalled season). Her first case as a Supreme Court justice was Citizen’s United, and she argued against the rights of corporations in matters of campaign finance.

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Time and again, Sonia from the Block has argued in favor of equity and fairness, handing down rulings with a strong but balanced hand, and advancing the causes of justice and equity. She’s a role model for all young women, in particular young women of color, as they navigate a world in which they might just need to advocate for the changes that will allow them to thrive. As we all navigate this very difficult world, may we all remember that fighting for what is right is never wrong, and may we all look to Justice Sotomayor for inspiration and guidance. Our Sonia from the Block colorway was inspired by the Puerto Rican street art in Sotomayor’s beloved Bronx, the colors and visual textures that reflect and inform the culture of the Nuyoricans that live there.