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Author of amazing works of fiction including her short story collection 'Interpreter of Maladies' which won the Pulitzer Prize. Her most famous works focus on the Indian-American and immigrant experience.

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Jhumpa Lahiri, byname of Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri, (born July 11, 1967, London, England), English-born American novelist and short-story writer whose works illuminate the immigrant experience, in particular that of East Indians.

Lahiri was born to Bengali parents from Calcutta (now Kolkata)-her father a university librarian and her mother a schoolteacher-who moved to London and then to the United States, settling in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, when she was young. Her parents nevertheless remained committed to their East Indian culture and determined to rear their children with experience of and pride in their cultural heritage. Lahiri was encouraged by her grade-school teachers to retain her family nickname, Jhumpa, at school. Although she wrote prolifically during her precollege school years, she did not embrace a writer's life until after she graduated (1989) with a B.A. in English literature from Barnard College and obtained three master's degrees (in English, creative writing, and comparative literature and arts) and a doctorate (in Renaissance studies) from Boston University in the 1990s.

While in graduate school and shortly thereafter, Lahiri published a number of short stories in such magazines as The New Yorker, Harvard Review, and Story Quarterly. She collected some of those stories in her debut collection, Interpreter of Maladies (1999). The nine stories, some set in Calcutta and others on the U.S. East Coast, examine such subjects as the practice of arranged marriage, alienation, dislocation, and loss of culture and provide insight into the experiences of Indian immigrants as well as the lives of Calcuttans. Among the awards garnered by Interpreter of Maladies were the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the 2000 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction.

Lahiri next tried her hand at a novel, producing The Namesake (2003; film 2006), a story that examines themes of personal identity and the conflicts produced by immigration by following the internal dynamics of a Bengali family in the United States. She returned to short fiction in Unaccustomed Earth (2008), a collection that likewise takes as its subject the experience of immigration as well as that of assimilation into American culture. Her novel The Lowland (2013) chronicles the divergent paths of two Bengali brothers. The tale was nominated for both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award and earned Lahiri the 2015 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, a prize established in 2010 by infrastructure developers DSC Limited to honour the achievements of South Asian writers and "to raise awareness of South Asian culture around the world."

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Lahiri was presented a 2014 National Humanities Medal by U.S. Pres. Barack Obama in 2015. That same year she published her first book written in Italian, In altre parole ( In Other Words), a meditation on her immersion in another culture and language. Lahiri continued writing in Italian, and in 2018 she released the novel Dove mi trovo ("Where I Find Myself").

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Amy Tikkanen, Corrections Manager.

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Rhode Island, constituent state of the United States of America. It was one of the original 13 states and is one of the six New England states. Rhode Island is bounded to the north and east by Massachusetts, to the south...

Barnard College, a private liberal arts college for women in the Morningside Heights neighbourhood of New York, New York, U.S. One of the Seven Sisters schools, it was founded in 1889 by Annie Nathan Meyer in honour of Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard, then president of Columbia University....

Boston University, private, coeducational institution of higher learning in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. The university is composed of 15 schools and colleges. Professional degrees are awarded at the School of Law, the School of Medicine, the Goldman School of Dental Medicine, and the School of Management. A range of graduate degree...

born

July 11, 1967 (age 52)
London, England

notable works

awards and honors

National Humanities Medal (2015)

DSC Prize for South Asian Literature (2015)

Pulitzer Prize

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Jhumpa Lahiri | Biography, Books, & Facts

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Jhumpa Lahiri, English-born American novelist and short-story writer whose works illuminate the immigrant experience, in particular that of East Indians. Her notable books included the short-story collection Interpreter of Maladies and the novels The Namesake and The Lowland. Learn more about Lahiri's life and work.

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Powerful U.S. Senator. Combat veteran of the Iraq War. Served as a U.S. Army helicopter pilot. Purple heart. Double amputee. Speaks Thai.

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Quick Facts
"I had my legs blown off in Iraq, and because I had my legs blown off in Iraq, people are listening to me. I'm not going to get my legs back, and that's fine, but if that gives me a platform to talk about the things that are important to me, like education and jobs, that's great.""I can't avoid the interest in the fact that I'm an injured female soldier. Understand that I'm going to use this as a platform.""I think women bring a slightly different perspective. The women, I think, are going to reach across the aisle a lot more. We're a lot more pragmatic, but we do come from all different backgrounds.""Our troops do an incredible job every single day, but our policy makers have not lived up to the sacrifices that our troops make every day."

Name

Tammy Duckworth

Birth Date

March 12, 1968 (age 52)

Education

Northern Illinois University, George Washington University, University of Hawaii

Place of Birth

Bangkok, Thailand

Full Name

Ladda Tammy Duckworth

Zodiac Sign

Pisces

Who Is Tammy Duckworth?

Tammy Duckworth was deployed to serve in the Iraq War in 2004 and lost both of her legs when her helicopter was struck. Duckworth became director of the Illinois Department of Veterans' Affairs in 2006, and three years later President Barack Obama appointed her assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. In 2012, she was elected to Congress, representing Illinois' 8th District. Four years later, she was elected a U.S. senator, thereby becoming the first disabled woman and the second Asian American woman in the Senate. In April 2018, Duckworth became the first female senator to give birth while holding office.

Early Life

Ladda Tammy Duckworth was born on March 12, 1968, in Bangkok, Thailand, to a mother of Chinese heritage and a father of British descent. Because her father did refugee work for the United Nations, Duckworth's childhood took place against varied backdrops - spanning Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Cambodia and Hawaii.

Duckworth, along with her mother, Lamai, and her father, Franklin, moved to Hawaii as a teenager. After high school, Duckworth earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Hawaii. Afterward, she obtained her Master of Arts in international affairs at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. In pursuit of yet more higher education, Duckworth then relocated to Illinois, where she enrolled in a political science Ph.D. program at Northern Illinois University.

Service in Iraq

While attending NIU, Duckworth enrolled in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps with the Illinois Army National Guard. Trained as a Blackhawk pilot, in 2004 Duckworth left NIU when she was deployed to Iraq. In Iraq, Duckworth flew Operation Iraqi Freedom combat missions until her helicopter was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade in the autumn of 2004.

The explosion took both of Duckworth's legs and robbed her of full function in her right arm. Still believing in the worthiness of her mission amid questions of whether she felt her sacrifice was for naught, Duckworth responded, "I was hurt in service for my country. I was proud to go. It was my duty as a soldier to go. And I would go tomorrow." She did, however, express frustration that U.S. policymakers were failing to match the sacrifices of American soldiers.

Following her injuries, Duckworth was promoted to major and awarded the Purple Heart. During her year's recovery time at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, she became an activist, advocating for better medical care for wounded veterans and their families. Duckworth presented her impassioned views to Congress, testifying on two separate occasions.

Leader of Veterans' Affairs

Duckworth's activism led her to pursue a political career after her recovery. In 2006 she ran for Congress but lost by a narrow margin. Instead, she took an appointment as director of the Illinois Department of Veterans' Affairs. In this role, she worked toward developing an incentive program that would give employers a tax credit for hiring war veterans. She also initiated programs that would provide veterans and their families with better mental support, health care and housing resources.

After President Obama was elected, he chose Duckworth as his assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. In her new role, Duckworth focused largely on putting a stop to the cycle of homeless veterans. She also developed resources especially tailored to the unique needs of female veterans.

History-Making Congresswoman

In 2012, Duckworth took a second shot at a seat in Congress, as a Democrat representing Illinois, and won. Her victory was twofold: Not only did Duckworth now have the platform to advance her political agenda, but she also became a living example for fellow female veterans, as the first disabled woman ever to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

During her time in the House of Representatives, Duckworth worked in a number of committees including the House Committee on Armed Services, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, as well as the House Select Committee on the Events, Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi. In 2013, during a House hearing, she made headlines when she took Virginia CEO Braulio Castillo to task for fraudulently representing himself as a disabled military vet and receiving millions of dollars in federal contracts. "Shame on you. You may not have broken any laws ... [but] you broke the trust of veterans." Duckworth added, "Twisting your ankle in prep school is not defending or serving this nation."

In 2016, Duckworth successfully ran for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Mark S. Kirk, thereby becoming the second female Asian American to win a Senate seat (California's Kamala Harris soon became the third) and the first disabled woman to accomplish the task. An outspoken Democrat, she railed against President Donald Trump during the brief government shutdown in January 2018, saying, "I will not be lectured about what our military needs by a five-deferment draft dodger."

Motherhood in the Senate

Prior to her injuries, Duckworth married Major Bryan Bowlsbey of the Illinois Army National Guard. She announced her retirement from the military in October 2014, shortly before giving birth to a daughter.

In January 2018, Duckworth announced that she was expecting a second daughter in April, which would make her the first senator to give birth while holding office. Noting it was "about damn time" someone achieved this, Duckworth said, "I can't believe it took until 2018. It says something about the inequality of representation that exists in our country."

A few weeks later, the senator penned an op-ed piece in which she pushed for expanded benefits for parental leave. Noting that she was among the lucky ones who would be able to enjoy paid time off while caring for a newborn, she cited the FAMILY Act, proposed by New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and the Child Care for Working Families Act, from Washington's Patty Murray, as examples of legislation that would help people balance the responsibilities of parenting and their careers.

On April 9, 2018, Duckworth gave birth to a baby girl, Maile Pearl, at a hospital in Arlington, Virginia. Along with tweeting messages that thanked friends and family for support, she issued a statement that showed she had an eye on returning to work. Duckworth then showed she meant those words seriously when she took 10-day-old Maile with her to cast what could have been a deciding vote against a Trump nominee for NASA administrator. The baby's presence came one day after the Senate changed its admission rules, making the senator and Maile the first mama-daughter team appear on the chamber floor during a vote.

Duckworth made her formal return to the Senate on July 2, noting she would have a nanny there to help care for Maile and make use of the breast pump and refrigerator in the new health and wellness room. She said it had been nice to get away and have quiet moments with her newborn, but added that she couldn't get too detached from work with her vote occasionally needed and other issues, like the administration's controversial border policy that separated immigrant families, commanding her attention in recent weeks.

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"I had my legs blown off in Iraq, and because I had my legs blown off in Iraq, people are listening to me. I'm not going to get my legs back, and that's fine, but if that gives me a platform to talk about the things that are important to me, like education and jobs, that's great."

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TONI (with an i)

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Taylor Swift /My Mom /babysitter /Jane Goodall 

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Taylor Swift /My Mom /babysitter /Jane Goodall 

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My mother has struggled with a lot of things in her life, both racist towards Indians and sexist towards women. Even in her own house she struggled. Through it all though, she kept strong, and she came out much braver than she started. She taught me not to be submissive towards anyone, and how to stay strong it times of hardship. She is incredibly intelligent, has rarely lost a court case, and extremely charitable. She was truly the one who made me realize what being strong meant. She taught me not to give up on my hopes and dreams, and how to be successful. I know I have her stubborn will and defiant attitude. I also know I certainly got her empathy towards others. She taught me how to stand strong on my own two feet. She taught me how to be a woman. She taught me how to be brave.

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Amelia Earhart
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Helen Keller
my mom

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"I was taught to read at an early age. By the time I was three, I was reciting speeches in the church. They'd put me up on the program, and say, 'Little Mistress Winfrey will render a recitation,' and I would do 'Jesus rose on Easter Day, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, all the angels did proclaim.'" Oprah Winfrey's public speaking career began in 1957.

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Toni Morrison is an inspirational African- American woman who wrote books about how slavery was bad and unjust.

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Who Was Toni Morrison?

Born on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, editor and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, exquisite language and richly detailed African American characters who are central to their narratives. Among her best-known novels are The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, Love and A Mercy. Morrison has earned a plethora of book-world accolades and honorary degrees, also receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

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Early Life and Education

Born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison was the second oldest of four children. Her father, George Wofford, worked primarily as a welder, but held several jobs at once to support the family. Her mother, Ramah, was a domestic worker. Morrison later credited her parents with instilling in her a love of reading, music and folklore along with clarity and perspective.

Living in an integrated neighborhood, Morrison did not become fully aware of racial divisions until she was in her teens. "When I was in first grade, nobody thought I was inferior. I was the only black in the class and the only child who could read," she later told a reporter from The New York Times. Dedicated to her studies, Morrison took Latin in school and read many great works of European literature. She graduated from Lorain High School with honors in 1949.

At Howard University, Morrison continued to pursue her interest in literature. She majored in English and chose the classics for her minor. After graduating from Howard in 1953, Morrison continued her education at Cornell University. She wrote her thesis on the works of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, and completed her master's degree in 1955. She then moved to the Lone Star State to teach at Texas Southern University.

Life as a Mother and Random House Editor

In 1957, Morrison returned to Howard University to teach English. There she met Harold Morrison, an architect originally from Jamaica. The couple married in 1958 and welcomed their first child, Harold, in 1961. After the birth of her son, Morrison joined a writers group that met on campus. She began working on her first novel with the group, which started out as a short story.

Morrison decided to leave Howard in 1963. After spending the summer traveling with her family in Europe, she returned to the United States with her son. Her husband, however, had decided to move back to Jamaica. At the time, Morrison was pregnant with their second child. She moved back home to live with her family in Ohio before the birth of son Slade in 1964. The following year, she moved with her sons to Syracuse, New York, where she worked for a textbook publisher as a senior editor. Morrison later went to work for Random House, where she edited works by Toni Cade Bambara and Gayl Jones, renowned for their literary fiction, as well as luminaries like Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali.

Toni Morrison's Books

'The Bluest Eye'

Morrison's first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. She used as her literary first name "Toni," based on a nickname derived from St. Anthony after she'd joined the Catholic Church. The book follows a young African American girl, Pecola Breedlove, who believes her incredibly difficult life would be better if only she had blue eyes. The controversial book didn't sell well, with Morrison stating in a 1994 afterword that the reception to the work was parallel to how her main character was treated by the world: "dismissed, trivialized, misread."

'Sula'

Morrison nonetheless continued to explore the African American experience in its many forms and eras in her work. Her next novel, Sula (1973), explores good and evil through the friendship of two women who grew up together in Ohio. Sula was nominated for the American Book Award.

'Song of Solomon'

Song of Solomon (1977) became the first work by an African American author to be a featured selection in the Book of the Month club since Native Son by Richard Wright. The lyrical story follows the journey of Milkman Dead, a Midwestern urban denizen who attempts to make sense of family roots and the often harsh realities of his world. Morrison received a number of accolades for the novel, which would go on to win the National Book Critics Circle Award and become a perennial favorite among academics and general readers.

Pulitzer for 'Beloved'

A rising literary star, Morrison was appointed to the National Council on the Arts in 1980. The following year, Tar Baby was published. The Caribbean-based novel drew some inspiration from folktales and received a decidedly mixed reaction from critics. Her next work, however, proved to be one of her greatest masterpieces. Beloved (1987) explores love and the supernatural. Inspired by real-world figure Margaret Garner, main character Sethe, a former slave, is haunted by her decision to kill her children rather than see them become enslaved. Three of her children survived, but her infant daughter died at her hand. Yet Sethe's daughter returns as a living entity who becomes an unrelenting presence in her home. For this spellbinding work, Morrison won several literary awards, including the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Ten years later, the book was turned into a movie starring Oprah Winfrey, Thandie Newton and Danny Glover.

Morrison Wins a Nobel Prize in 1993

Morrison became a professor at Princeton University in 1989 and continued to produce great works, including Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992). In recognition of her contributions to her field, she received the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, making her the first African American woman to be selected for the award. The following year, she published the novel Jazz, which explores marital love and betrayal in 20th-century Harlem.

At Princeton, Morrison established a special workshop for writers and performers known as the Princeton Atelier in 1994. The program was designed to help students create original works in a variety of artistic fields.

More Books By Morrison

'Paradise'

Outside of her academic work, Morrison continued to write new works of fiction. Her next novel, Paradise (1998), which focuses on a fictional African American town called Ruby, earned mixed reviews.

Children's Books

In 1999, Morrison branched out to children's literature. She worked with her artist son Slade on The Big Box (1999), The Book of Mean People (2002), The Ant or the Grasshopper? (2003) and Little Cloud and Lady Wind (2010). She has also explored other genres, writing the play Dreaming Emmett in the mid-1980s and the lyrics for "Four Songs" with composer Andre Previn in 1994 and "Sweet Talk" with composer Richard Danielpour in 1997. And in 2000, The Bluest Eye, which initially had modest sales, became a literary blockbuster upon being chosen as the Oprah Book Club pick, going on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies.

'Love'

Her next novel, Love (2003), divides its narrative between the past and present. Bill Cosey, a wealthy entrepreneur and owner of the Cosey Hotel and Resort, is the center figure in the work. The flashbacks explore his community life and flawed relationships with women, with his death casting a long shadow on the present. A critic for Publisher's Weekly praised the book, stating that "Morrison has crafted a gorgeous, stately novel whose mysteries are gradually unearthed."

Writing a Libretto

In 2006, Morrison announced she was retiring from her post at Princeton. That year, The New York Times Book Review named Beloved the best novel of the past 25 years. She continued to explore new art forms, writing the libretto for Margaret Garner, an American opera that explores the tragedy of slavery through the true life story of one woman's experiences. The work debuted at the New York City Opera in 2007.

Morrison traveled back to the early days of colonialism in America for A Mercy (2008), a book that some have construed as a page-turner in its unfolding. Once again, a woman who is both a slave and a mother must make a terrible choice regarding her child, who becomes part of an expanding homestead. As a critic from the Washington Post described it, the novel is "a fusion of mystery, history and longing," with the New York Times singling out the work as one of the 10 Best Books of the year.

Morrison's Nonfiction Books

In addition to her many novels, Morrison has crafted nonfiction as well. She published a collection of her essays, reviews and speeches, What Moves at the Margin, in 2008.

A champion for the arts, Morrison spoke out about censorship in October 2009 after one of her books was banned at a Michigan high school. She served as editor for Burn This Book, a collection of essays on censorship and the power of the written word, which was published that same year. She told a crowd gathered for the launch of the Free Speech Leadership Council about the importance of fighting censorship. "The thought that leads me to contemplate with dread the erasure of other voices, of unwritten novels, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being overheard by the wrong people, outlawed languages flourishing underground, essayists' questions challenging authority never being posed, unstaged plays, canceled films-that thought is a nightmare. As though a whole universe is being described in invisible ink," Morrison said.

In 2017 the author released The Origin of Others - an exploration on race, fear, mass migration and borders - based on her Norton lectures at Harvard.

Morrison's Late Career Books

'Home'

Morrison continued to be one of literature's great storytellers through her 80s. She published the novel Home in 2012, exploring a period of American history once again-this time, the post-Korean War era. "I was trying to take the scab off the '50s, the general idea of it as very comfortable, happy, nostalgic. Mad Men. Oh, please," she said to the Guardian in reference to choosing the setting. "There was a horrible war you didn't call a war, where 58,000 people died. There was McCarthy." Her main character, Frank, is a veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that adversely affects his relationships and ability to function in the world.

While writing the novel, Morrison experienced a great personal loss. Her son Slade died of pancreatic cancer in December 2010.

Around the time that Home was published, Morrison also debuted another work: She worked with opera director Peter Sellars and songwriter Rokia Traoré on a new production inspired by William Shakespeare's Othello. The trio focused on the relationship between Othello's wife Desdemona and her African nurse, Barbary, in Desdemona, which premiered in London in the summer of 2012. That same year Morrison received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.

'God Help the Child'

In 2015, Morrison published God Help the Child, a layered novella focusing on the experiences of the character Bride - a young, dark-skinned black woman who works in the cosmetics industry while reckoning with the rejections of her past. That same year the BBC aired the documentary T oni Morrison Remembers. In autumn 2016, she received the Pen/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction.

Death

Morrison died on August 5, 2019 at Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

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Born on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, editor and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, exquisite language and richly detailed African American characters who are central to their narratives.

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has a jewlery copay, podcast, and does audio books
with 2 kids

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She has an Interesting philosophy

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Diotima of Mantinea (; Greek: Διοτίμα; Latin: Diotīma) was an ancient Greek prophetess and philosopher thought to have lived circa 440 B.C., who plays an important role in Plato's . In the dialogue, her ideas are the origin of the concept of Platonic love.

The name Diotima means one who honors or is honored by Zeus, and her Mantinean origin is reminiscent of the root "mantis", which would suggest an association with prophecy. The Greek form also includes the sound nike: Diotima Mantinike as a pun in Greek would thus sound like "Diotima from Prophet-victory".

In the , she is implied to be a priestess or prophetess and is said to be from the Peloponnesian city of Mantinea, which was allied against Athens at the time of the dialogue - though one version of the manuscript preferred in old readings called her a mantic woman, or seeress, rather than a woman from Mantinea.

Since the only contemporaneous source concerning her is Plato, doubts have been raised about whether she was a real historical personage or merely a fictional creation; however, nearly all of the characters named in Plato's dialogues have been found to correspond to real people living in ancient Athens. A second century reference to Diotima can be found in the works of Lucian.

Plato was thought by most 19th and early 20th century scholars to have based Diotima on Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, so impressed was he by her intelligence and wit. However, Aspasia appears under her own name in Plato's dialogue , and some scholars have convincingly argued that Plato did not use false names; therefore, Diotima could be a historical figure. In the Symposium, Diotima puts forth ideas that are different from both Socrates's and Plato's, thereby representing a different philosophical position. Socrates also claims to have learned from her. Both of these instances in Plato's dialogue have been used to argue for her existence.

A first century bronze relief found in Pompeii depicts Socrates and an unnamed female figure, along with a winged Eros; although some have supposed the seated woman in the image to be Diotima, others have argued her appearance (notably a necklace) would suggest she is in fact more likely to be Aphrodite or Aspasia. Writings from the second through the fifth centuries A.D. refer to Diotima as a real person, although Plato is probably their only basis for this. The suggestion that she was a fictional creation was not introduced until the 15th century (notably by Marsilio Ficino), probably based on the fact that she was a woman; however, this plausible hypothesis (with numerous parallels in the study of Platonic dialogues, for instance Callicles in the ) was in fact put forward because Diotima is not mentioned by contemporary or near-contemporary sources and because her very name and origin could be understood as symbolic.

In Plato's Symposium the members of a party discuss the meaning of love. Socrates says that in his youth he was taught "the philosophy of love" by Diotima, who was a seer or priestess. Socrates also claims that Diotima successfully postponed the Plague of Athens. In a dialogue that Socrates recounts at the symposium, Diotima says that Socrates has confused the idea of love with the idea of the beloved. Love, she says, is neither fully beautiful nor good, as the earlier speakers in the dialogue had argued. Diotima gives Socrates a genealogy of Love ( Eros), stating that he is the son of "resource ( poros) and poverty ( penia)". In her view, love drives the individual to seek beauty, first earthly beauty, or beautiful bodies. Then as a lover grows in wisdom, the beauty that is sought is spiritual, or beautiful souls. For Diotima, the most correct use of love of other human beings is to direct one's mind to love of wisdom, or philosophy. The beautiful beloved inspires the mind and the soul and directs one's attention to spiritual things. One proceeds from recognition of another's beauty, to appreciation of Beauty apart from any individual, to consideration of Divinity, the source of Beauty, to love of Divinity.

. . . and directing his gaze from now, on towards beauty as a whole, he should turn to the great ocean of beauty, and in contemplation of it give birth to many beautiful and magnificent speeches and thoughts in the abundance of philosophy. (Diotima to Socrates in Plato's Symposium.)

Beginning in the 20th century, the dehistoricization of Diotima became a subject of interest for several scholars, including Mary Ellen Waithe. In 2005, Margaret Urban Walker summarized Waithe's research, stating that "the evidence for Diotima's reality is substantial, even if not conclusive, and that her imaginary status appears to be a fifteenth-century fiction that stuck."

In 2019 the Oxford classical scholar Armand D'Angour published Socrates in Love: The Making of a Philosopher, presenting for the first time a wholly new case for identifying Diotima with Aspasia. His historical arguments are based on 1) the likelihood of Aspasia's involvement in the warding off of plague that Athenians will have expected to be brought on by Pericles' irreligious actions (e.g. failure to bury the dead) after his campaign against Samos in 440-39 2) the fact that 'Diotima' means 'honored by/honoring Zeus'; Pericles was called 'Zeus' in comedy and popular parlance, and he was notorious for the unusual honor that he bestowed on Aspasia.

Mystery novels by Gary Corby, which include Diotima as a character.

1. Evans, Nancy. "Diotima and Demeter as Mystagogues in Plato's Symposium." Hypatia, vol. 21, no. 2, 2006, pp. 1-27. ^ JSTOR 3810989.

2. ^ Riegel, Nicholas (2016). Cosmópolis: mobilidades culturais às origens do pensamento antigo. Eryximachus and Diotima in Plato's Symposium: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra. ISBN 978-989-26-1287-4.

3. ^ Ruby Blondell The Play of Character in Plato's Dialogues, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p.31

4. Lucian. ^ Imagines. In Lucian, Vol. 4. Translated by A. M. Harmon. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Publ., 1925, 289.

5. Wider, Kathleen. "Women philosophers in the Ancient Greek World: Donning the Mantle". ^ Hypatia vol 1 no 1 Spring 1986. Part of her argument focuses on the point that all scholars who argued "for" a fictitious Diotima were male, and most used as a starting point Smith's uncertainty of her historical existence (Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1870).

6. Waithe, Mary Ellen (1987). "Diotima of Mantinea". In Waithe, Mary Ellen (ed.). A History of Women Philosophers: Volume I: Ancient Women Philosophers, 600 BC-500 AD. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff. pp. 83-116. ISBN 9789024733484.

7. ^ Urban Walker, Margaret (Summer 2005). "Diotima's Ghost: The Uncertain Place of Feminist Philosophy in Professional Philosophy". Hypatia. 20 (3): 153-164. doi:10.2979/hyp.2005.20.3.153. JSTOR 3811120.

Navia, Luis E., Socrates, the man and his philosophy, pp. 30, 171. University Press of America ISBN 0-8191-4854-7.

Evans, Nancy. "Diotima and Demeter as Mystagogues in Plato's Symposium." Hypatia, vol. 21, no. 2, 2006, pp. 1-27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810989.

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Diotima of Mantinea (; Greek: Διοτίμα; Latin: Diotīma) was an ancient Greek prophetess and philosopher thought to have lived circa 440 B.C., who plays an important role in Plato's . In the dialogue, her ideas are the origin of the concept of Platonic love.

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Despite being told as a child she would never walk again, Wilma Rudolph relentlessly pursued her dreams becoming an international track and field star. At the height of her career, "the fastest woman in the world" used her platform to shed light on social issues.

Wilma Glodean Rudolph was born on June 23, 1940 in Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee. As one of 22 children, she was constantly surrounded by support and care, which she needed given her poor health. Rudolph survived bouts of polio and scarlet fever. Her illness forced her to wear a brace on her leg. Rudolph's diagnosis was very bleak, "my doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother." Together, Rudolph's parents and siblings took turns taking care of her. They would often remove her leg brace and massage her injured leg. At the age of six, Rudolph began to hop on one leg. By eight she could move around with a leg brace. At the age of 11, Rudolph's mother discovered her playing basketball outside. She quickly turned to sports, becoming a natural athlete. She was nominated as All-American in basketball during high school. However, after a chance meeting with a college coach she turned to track and field.

While still in high school Rudolph competed on the collegiate level. She competed in the 1956 Olympic games and won a bronze medal in 4x100 relay. Four years later, Rudolph headed to the 1960 summer Olympics determined to get gold. Her performance in Rome cemented her as one of the greatest athletes of the 20 th century. She won three gold medals and broke at least three world records. Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field at the same Olympic game. Her performance also earned her the title of "the fastest woman in the world."

Returning home an Olympic champion Rudolph refused to attend her homecoming parade if it was not integrated. She won the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year award in 1961. The following year, Rudolph retired from track and field. She went on to finish her degree at Tennessee State University and began working in education. She continued her involvement in sports, working at several community centers throughout the United States. She was inducted into the US Olympic Hall of Fame and started an organization to help amateur track and field stars. In 1990, Rudolph became the first woman to receive the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Silver Anniversary Award. The indoor track and dormitory at Tennessee State University are named in honor of Rudolph. In 1977, her life was the subject of a prime-time television movie. Rudolph died of a brain tumor on November 12, 1994.

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Wilma Rudolph relentlessly pursued her dreams becoming an international track and field star.

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-Emma Watson
-my mom
-Kamala Harris

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg is extremely inspirational to me because she has shown me that I can do anything if I work hard. She also broke gender barriers and continued to fight for her beliefs and values during her time as a lawyer, and Supreme Court justice.

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She voted and got a fine and didn't pay it even though she knows that she will be in jail if she didn't pay the fine.

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Who Was Susan B. Anthony?

Susan B. Anthony was an American writer, lecturer and abolitionist who was a leading figure in the women's voting rights movement. Raised in a Quaker household, Anthony went on to work as a teacher. She later partnered with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and would eventually lead the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

Early Life, Family and Education

Anthony was born on February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts. The second oldest of eight children to a local cotton mill owner and his wife, only five of Anthony's siblings lived to be adults. One child was stillborn, and another died at age two.

Anthony grew up in a Quaker family and developed a strong moral compass early on, spending much of her life working on social causes. In 1826, the Anthony family moved to Battenville, New York. Around this time, Anthony was sent to study at a Quaker school near Philadelphia.

After her father's business failed in the late 1830s, Anthony returned home to help her family make ends meet. She found work as a teacher. The Anthonys moved to a farm in the Rochester, New York area, in the mid-1840s.

Abolitionist Movement

In the 1840s, Anthony's family became involved in the fight to end slavery, also known as the abolitionist movement. The Anthonys' Rochester farm served as a meeting place for such famed abolitionists as Frederick Douglass. Around this time, Anthony became the head of the girls' department at Canajoharie Academy - a post she held for two years.

Temperance Movement

Leaving the Canajoharie Academy in 1849, Anthony soon devoted more of her time to social issues. She was also involved in the temperance movement, aimed at limiting or completely stopping the production and sale of alcohol.

Anthony was inspired to fight for women's rights while campaigning against alcohol. Anthony was denied a chance to speak at a temperance convention because she was a woman, and later realized that no one would take women in politics seriously unless they had the right to vote.

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

In 1851, Anthony attended an anti-slavery conference, where she met Stanton. The pair established the Women's New York State Temperance Society in 1852. Before long, they were fighting for women's rights, forming the New York State Woman's Rights Committee. Anthony also started petitions for women to have the right to own property and to vote. She traveled extensively, campaigning on the behalf of women.

In 1856, Anthony began working as an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society. She spent years promoting the society's cause up until the Civil War.

After the Civil War was over, Anthony began focusing more on women's rights. She and Stanton established the American Equal Rights Association in 1866, calling for the same rights to be granted to all regardless of race or sex. In 1868, Anthony and Stanton also created and began producing The Revolution, a weekly publication that lobbied for women's rights. The newspaper's motto was "Men their rights, and nothing more; women their rights, and nothing less."

Women's Right to Vote

In 1869, Anthony and Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. Anthony was tireless in her efforts, giving speeches around the country to convince others to support a woman's right to vote.

She even took matters into her own hands in 1872, when she voted illegally in the presidential election. Anthony was arrested for the crime, and she unsuccessfully fought the charges; she was fined $100, which she never paid.

Even in her later years, Anthony never gave up on her fight for women's suffrage. In 1905, she met with President Theodore Roosevelt in Washington, D.C., to lobby for an amendment to give women the right to vote. However, it wouldn't be until 14 years after Anthony's death - in 1920 - that the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving all adult women the right to vote, was passed.

Books

In the early 1880s, Anthony published the first volume of History of Woman Suffrage - a project that she co-edited with Stanton, Ida Husted Harper and Matilda Joslin Gage. Several more volumes would follow.

Anthony also helped Harper to record her own story, which resulted in the 1898 work The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony: A Story of the Evolution of the Status of Women.

Death

Anthony died on March 13, 1906, at the age of 86 at her home in Rochester, New York. According to her obituary in The New York Times, shortly before her death, Anthony told friend Anna Shaw, "To think I have had more than 60 years of hard struggle for a little liberty, and then to die without it seems so cruel."

Susan B. Anthony Dollar

In recognition of her dedication and hard work, the U.S. Treasury Department put Anthony's portrait on dollar coins in 1979, making her the first woman to be so honored.

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Susan B. Anthony was an American writer, lecturer and abolitionist who was a leading figure in the women's voting rights movement. Raised in a Quaker household, Anthony went on to work as a teacher. She later partnered with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and would eventually lead the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

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Kamala Harris also inspires women!

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Kamila Harris, Oprah Winfrey, Harriet Tubman

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- She advocates for women's rights.

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Bertha Ringer Benz, the daughter of a wealthy family from the southwestern German town of Pforzheim, had come to her husband's aid before. Two years before the couple's 1872 wedding she had used part of her dowry to help prop up the failing iron construction company Karl Benz had launched with an irresponsible business partner. When he lost control of the company shortly thereafter, Benz moved on, using Bertha's continued financial support (and business acumen) to form a new manufacturing venture known as Benz & Cie. When the company proved successful, Karl was able to turn his attention to a lifelong dream-the creation of the first true automobile. After several years of failed attempts, Karl finally finished work on his first horseless carriage in December 1885 (he received a patent for it the following year). The single-cylinder, 2.5-horsepower car had three wheels-one in front and two in the back-and could reach a maximum speed of 25 mph.

Karl may have been a supremely talented engineer, but he was a terrible marketer. The first few public displays of his new invention didn't go well, including one demonstration that quickly ended when a driver lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a nearby wall, terrifying onlookers. Ever the perfectionist, Benz retreated to his factory, where he continually tinkered with his automobile in private. However, Bertha, whose inheritance had helped keep the family afloat in the lean years, was well aware of the need to publicize the automobile as much as possible. And there was added pressure from the competition just a few miles away; another German engineer, Gottlieb Daimler, had invented a horseless carriage of his own- the world's first four-wheeled, high-speed automobile.

(WikiMedia Commons)

Frustrated by her husband's apparent unwillingness to act on his own, Bertha took matters into her own hands. In early August 1888 (the date has been variously given as either August 5 or 12), Bertha packed up one of her husband's cars, the recently completed Patent-Motorwagen No. 3, and with her two teenage sons in tow set out to visit her mother in Pforzheim. She didn't tell Karl beforehand, but instead left him a letter informing him of her plans.

The Benzes hit the road- which in many places turned out to be rocky, dusty and unpaved-with Bertha acting as both driver and automobile mechanic along the way. When she ran low on fuel, she sought out a local pharmacy that sold ligroin, the petroleum solvent used to run Karl Benz's cars. She made an emergency repair to the car's ignition with her garter. When the fuel line became clogged part of the way through their journey, Bertha was able to clear it using nothing more than her hairpin. Bertha is even credited with devising the world's first pair of brake pads: when the car's worn-down, wooden brakes began to fail, she asked a local shoemaker to install leather soles instead.

The three travelers finally reached the home of Bertha's mother around dusk, having covered 65 miles in less than 12 hours. Bertha sent Karl a telegram informing him of the family's safe arrival but news of her exploit had already reached the press, thanks to eyewitness reports from residents of the towns and villages Bertha and the boys had passed along the way. Most expressed amazement at Karl Benz's achievement and how safe it seemed to be, although others were reportedly terrified of the sudden appearance of the automobile in their midst-one driven by a women, no less. While the publicity was certainly nice, there was a more practical upshot to Bertha Benz's road trip. The difficulties she and her sons faced getting Karl's 2.5-horse-powered car up neighboring hills (often manually pushing the car uphill) convinced the inventor to make a crucial modification - the introduction of the world's first gear system.

(Credit: National Motor Museum/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

After visiting with her mother for several days, Bertha set out for her return trip, following a different route and introducing her husband's automobile to even more people before arriving home safely. In all, she had driven over 120 miles at a time when no other automobile had traveled more than a few dozen feet. Her trip unleashed an avalanche of publicity and the couple began receiving orders for their newfangled contraption almost immediately. Within a decade Karl's company, Benz & Cie., became the world's largest automobile company with a full-time staff of more than 400 and annual sales of nearly 600 vehicles.

Karl remained with the company he had founded in an advisory position until his death in 1929. Benz & Cie. had merged three years earlier with Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach's company to form Daimler-Benz, home to the Mercedes-Benz. While the Benz family remained on the company's board, they also started another automobile business, Benz Sonz, in 1906. Karl and Bertha, along with sons Eugen and Richard, who had accompanied their mother on her history-making 1888 trip, formed the new company, which remained family-owned until it closed its doors in 1924. Bertha Benz died 20 years later at the age of 95. Her 1888 triumph has been memorialized in books and on film, and today motorists can travel the 120-mile long Bertha Benz Memorial Route, which follows the path of her historic trip.

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Bertha Ringer Benz, the daughter of a wealthy family from the southwestern German town of Pforzheim, had come to her husband's aid before. Two years before the couple's 1872 wedding she had used part of her dowry to help prop up the failing iron construction company Karl Benz had launched with an irresponsible business partner.

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She became the second female justice of the Supreme court.

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Worked hard against incredible physical odds to learn to read and communicate. Her teacher believed in her and never gave up. So inspiring.

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Fought for women to have the same rights as men as well of all races to have the same rights.

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My mom because she has dealt with racist things but handled them well

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My mom because she has dealt with racist things but handled them well

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Black Lives Matter - the 3 women who started the movement

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Black Lives Matter - the 3 women who started the movement

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I first heard about the Black Lives Matter movement the year my son Trayvon was killed. It wasn't on a national level yet. It was just something that people were saying in our circles. To know that Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi were out there organizing this movement -I felt supported and encouraged.

There are only three of them, but they are everywhere. They are getting people to think: What if you had a 17-year-old son in a hoodie, and no weapon, just a candy and a drink, and now he's dead on the ground? What if your daughter was sleeping in her own bed and the police knocked down the door and killed her? How would you feel? That is what "Black Lives Matter" asks.

The moment that I was going through my own tragedy, the same things were happening with Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Jordan Davis, Dontre Hamilton and Oscar Grant. I'm in a circle with all of their families, and we continue to lift one another up. And it continues to happen-to George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and more.

But this year feels different. Since the video came out of the brutal killing of George Floyd, people are actually witnessing what African Americans have been going through most of our lives. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Once you feel the pain in your chest, you can't unfeel that pain. I'm glad to see there are more young people getting involved, more nationalities, more races-the protests are now a rainbow of people from all walks of life, in different countries, joining and saying, "Black lives do matter."

This is about human lives. We want people to support u s, stand with us, write a letter, speak to your local officials, join a rally. Do something. Make sure people are hearing your voice saying, "Black lives matter." We can't give up. Patrisse, Alicia and Opal won't.
Fulton is founder of the Trayvon Martin Foundation Buy a print of TIME's Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi cover.

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Black Lives Matter Founders: The 100 Most Influential People of 2020

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Find out why Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi made the 2020 TIME 100 list.

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She is a brilliant songwriter/composer, multi-instrumentalist who came out of the jazz world. One of the few people who can sing and play the double bass at the highest possible level at the same time. It’s hard! Amazing composer, musician who straddles many genres. I think she was the first jazz artist, at least in a long time, to win Best New Artist at the Grammys. It was a huge deal! She pushed through some major walls in the world of jazz. Check out her music!

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It's not enough to make list after list. The Turning the Tables project seeks to suggest alternatives to the traditional popular music canon, and to do more than that, too: to stimulate conversation about how hierarchies emerge and endure. This year, Turning the Tables considers how women and non-binary artists are shaping music in our moment, from the pop mainstream to the sinecures of jazz and contemporary classical music. Our list of the 200 Greatest Songs By Women+ offers a soundtrack to a new century. This series of essays takes on another task. The 25 arguments writers make in these pieces challenge the usual definitions of influence. Some rethink the building legacies of popular artists; others celebrate those who create within subcultures, their innovations rippling outward over time. As always, women forge new pathways in sound; today, they also make waves under the surface of culture by confronting, in their music, the increased fluidity of "woman" itself. What is a woman? It's a timeless question on the surface, but one deeply engaged with whatever historical moment in which it is asked. Our 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century illuminate its complexities. -Ann Powers
Pop fans of a certain age may only remember Esperanza Spalding as a spoiler, the interloper who once robbed an obsessively worshiped teen idol of his Grammy.

The year was 2011. Spalding, then 26 years old and little-known outside jazz circles, had been nominated in the coveted best new artist category alongside Drake, Mumford & Sons, Florence + the Machine and Justin Bieber, the obvious favorite that night. No one expected her to win, least of all herself. But the upset was less shocking for the vitriol of spurned Beliebers- of which there was plenty - than as the first and only time the award has been given to someone who self-identifies as jazz artist.

Spalding has undeniably made her mark within that male-dominated, musically conservative field. At the same time, she's also shown her capacity to operate irrespective of its borders, an unusual achievement irrespective of her gender.

She didn't exactly come out of nowhere. A native of Portland, Ore., Spalding played classical violin as a child and gigged in an indie band on bass as a teenager. She graduated from the Berklee College of Music in only three years, becoming, at the time, the youngest instructor in the school's history at the age of 20. By the time of her Grammy nomination, she'd already recorded three albums: Junjo (2006), an offering of breezy originals and standards; Esperanza (2008), a garland of Afro-Latin and Brazilian influences; and Chamber Music Society (2010), a well-tailored concert program featuring strings. Three more have followed since then: Radio Music Society (2012), a collection of hummable, danceable, radio-friendly tunes that won a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album; Emily's D+Evolution (2016), an Afrofuturistic landscape of complex, groove-oriented compositions; and the unprecedented Exposure (2017), created in just 77 hours while streamed on Facebook Live.

It's tempting to think of Spalding as a prodigy. Drummer, composer and producer Terri Lyne Carrington, who first met Spalding during those early Berklee years, prefers a different term: "I call her a genius every chance I get."

"If we go back in the music's history," explains Carrington, who is well-versed in women's struggles in jazz, "there are very few people who are accomplished in all of the areas that Esperanza is. She's a virtuosic bass player. Her voice is capable of acrobatics. Her compositions are not easy. Her lyrics are poetry. And she puts it all together in a way that's commercially appealing. She's setting an extreme example for young women in music."

Similarly, few have traversed such diverse stylistic terrain at such a young age, a feat Spalding has accomplished in spite of being policed by jazz purists. At times, they've grumbled that her music is too immature or too accessible (read: too playful and too joyful), a stance so predictable that it says more about the intractability of critics than the music. In jazz's time-honored apprentice system, "sidemen" ready themselves by playing in the bands of more seasoned leaders, ranks that women can still find challenging to enter. Although Spalding has performed, and continues to, in groups such as beloved saxophonist Joe Lovano's Us Five, she has leapfrogged through the expected dues-paying to make her own music. Her self-described "f*** it, whatever" attitude, the result of having already faced down a lifetime of low expectations, has served her well.

At the beginning of her career, Spalding recently told me by phone, she was considered "a hot - hey, I'm still hot - brown lady of indeterminate ethnicity. There was a novelty that drew people to me as an entity before the merit of my work could make a place for itself. Many times people didn't expect anything from me because I was a pretty girl. And those in the industry didn't care how I played because they saw I was marketable."

If Spalding assembled her musician's toolkit by mastering classical music, jazz and its Afro-Latin counterparts, she came into her own by threading those influences through the R&B she heard on the radio when she was a kid: Sam Cooke; Smokey Robinson; Earth, Wind & Fire. That fusion was already audible in Esperanza's funky bass lines, but has taken off in her later projects as she has come into the orbit of black popular musicians.

A favorite of the Obamas, Spalding performed "Overjoyed" at the White House in tribute to Stevie Wonder in 2009, sparking a relationship between the two artists. Prince invited her to jam, and she played on his BET Lifetime Achievement Award tribute and opened for him on tour in 2011. (When I saw the show, I couldn't help checking out Questlove seated at the end of my aisle, his head bobbing to Spalding's "I Know You Know.") Radio Music Society featured a guest appearance by Lalah Hathaway; Q-Tip produced a pair of its tracks. Spalding appeared as a guest on Janelle Monáe's 2013 album The Electric Lady and Bruno Mars' 2012 Unorthodox Jukebox.

These artists clearly acknowledge Spalding as a talented peer. The benefits of their creative exchanges may seem obvious to those outside of jazz, but they run contrary to jazz's often elitist musical culture. They come at a time when the form has its sights set in the rearview mirror, when most young artists are "trying to sound like they peaked in 1942 or 1957," says Carrington.

Spalding, instead, has more in common with two of jazz's greatest living composers: pianist Herbie Hancock and saxophonist Wayne Shorter, co-founder of the superband Weather Report. (Incidentally, Spalding is writing the libretto for Shorter's opera Iphigenia, premiering in 2020.) Alumni of Miles Davis' second great quintet, the two men pioneered fusion starting in the 1970s, walking paths that brought them to audiences for commercial music.

For example, Spalding's "Good Lava" from Emily's D+Evolution demands that we "See this pretty girl, watch this pretty girl flow"; grungy guitars mirror bass in shape-shifting, Tetris-like configurations punctuated by ear-popping, overdubbed vocals (think "Bohemian Rhapsody"). "Judas" wows with epic, rangey harmonies linked together by a recurrent, loping bass line. And, with its echoes of Joni Mitchell, "Earth to Heaven" splays a broken chorus across voices, guitars, bass and keyboards, interrupting serpentine melodies. A culmination of Spalding's work and influences to date, this is funk at its most serious-minded and compositional.

But the ways in which Spalding's music are truly the most radical are perhaps the most easily overlooked: how her approach to singing and the substance of her playing challenge gender norms across styles.

A slender reed of a woman who might still be mistaken for a teenager, Spalding possesses a voice that is agile and lithe, closer to Diana Ross, Roberta Flack (a closeted jazz musician) or Brazilian singer Elis Regina than to her jazz precursors. Spalding doesn't sing torch songs and rarely writes of romance. She doesn't attempt to reel in her audiences with flirtation. She chooses not to perform desire or longing, themes that fuel the most deeply held stereotypes of jazz women as singers who simply emote rather than perform with technical skill. That Spalding can sing with power and spirit while refusing to operate from a place of emotional want represents an enormous psychic shift within jazz, bringing the music in line with contemporary women's values.

Likewise, her bass playing redefines that instrument through her penchant for lyrical invention. During the press party for Chamber Music Society, I remember overhearing one critic complain to another, "Well, she's no Paul Chambers," referring to the muscular Detroit bassist on some of Miles Davis' most famous albums.

"That really ticks me off," Carrington responds, knowing there's no way to compete with dead legends. "Bringing a more feminine aesthetic into the music is mandatory at this point. Because Paul Chambers didn't get around the instrument the way she does. So she's not digging in as hard; it gives her a kind of fleeting emotion that is beautiful. He did not sound like a butterfly. And if you're saying that the bass cannot sound like a butterfly, that's bulls***."

It's both absurd and completely predictable that Spalding's unconventional excellence would be threatening to those who would uphold the status quo through the bass. And it's tempting to write that she does everything Paul Chambers did except backwards and in high heels, because it's still gratifying to see women shredding ferociously on this instrument. There have long been female players with the chops to do just that: among them, late jazz bassist Carline Ray, session musician Carol Kaye, Tina Weymouth (Talking Heads), Gail Ann Dorsey (David Bowie), Sara Lee (Gang of Four, B-52s, Indigo Girls) and Meshell Ndegeocello, who herself deserves far greater recognition as an innovator. There's something particularly powerful about seeing a woman succeed - and succeed wildly, popularly - on the instrument.

Like keyboards, the bass provides accompaniment. Like guitar, it can take pyrotechnic solos. But unlike these instruments, the bass is not optional. It can't be abandoned for the microphone or dismissed as an accessory. It is the foundation of any band: its rhythmic and harmonic center of gravity, its anchor. To claim the bass is to take on a role and occupy a register, one where we may have been blind to women's absence (such that it's easier to accept Meghan Trainor or Nicki Minaj adopting "bass" as a sexual innuendo than to envision a woman commanding the instrument).

When we see Esperanza Spalding playing her instrument as she sings, in front of her own band, in the context of the new musical worlds she has created, we bear witness to a woman who is so completely in control of her own context that she dwells at the foundation on which it stands. Made visible, hers is leadership that cannot be denied.

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Esperanza Spalding Is The 21st Century's Jazz Genius

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It's not enough to make list after list. The Turning the Tables project seeks to suggest alternatives to the traditional popular music canon, and to do more than that, too: to stimulate conversation about how hierarchies emerge and endure.

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She's an icon for me persoanlly bc she's bi and she is such a baddie

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She was able to record everything that was going on around her, which is very brave for her situation

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- She not only fought for women's suffrage
- Also fought for the right for black people to vote

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Who Was Lucy Stone?

Lucy Stone dedicated her life to improving the rights of American women. She supported the Women's National Loyal League, which was founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (though Stone and the two would later be at odds), and in 1866 helped found the American Equal Rights Association. She also organized and was elected president of the State Woman's Suffrage Association of New Jersey, and spent her life serving the cause. Stone died 30 years before women were finally permitted to vote (August 1920), on October 18, 1893, in Dorchester, Massachusetts.

Early Life & Family

Influential women's rights activist and abolitionist Lucy Stone was born on August 13, 1818, in West Brookfield, Massachusetts. One of Francis Stone and Hannah Matthews's nine children, Stone was steeped early on in life the virtues of fighting against slavery from her parents, both committed abolitionists. Smart and clearly driven, Stone was also unafraid to rebel against her parents' wishes. Having watched her older brothers attend college, the 16-year-old Stone defied her parents and pursued a higher education.

Education

In 1839, Stone attended Mount Holyoke Seminary for just one term. Four years later, she enrolled at Oberlin College in Ohio. While Oberlin touted itself as a progressive institution, the school did not offer a level playing field for women. As a result, the college denied Stone the opportunity to pursue her passion in public speaking. Undeterred, Stone, who paid her way through school, graduated in 1847 with honors, becoming the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a bachelor's degree.

Acclaimed Speaker

Under the direction of William Lloyd Garrison, whom she'd met while at Oberlin, Stone soon found work with the American Anti-Slavery Society. Her work with the organization tapped into her continued and heightened passion to eradicate slavery. It also launched her career as a public speaker.

While she was regularly heckled by opponents (she was even ex-communicated by the Congregational Church, the religion of her parents), Stone emerged as an outspoken voice in the anti-slavery movement and the women's rights cause.

Accomplishments

In 1850, Stone convened the first national Women's Rights Convention. Held in Worcester, Massachusetts, the event was hailed as a significant moment for American women, and Stone was a celebrated leader. Her speech at the convention was reprinted in newspapers nationwide.

For the next few years, Stone, who was paid well for her speeches, kept up a relentless schedule, traveling throughout North America to lecture about women's rights while continuing to hold her annual convention.

In 1868 she co-founded and became president of the State Woman's Suffrage Association of New Jersey, which would later be succeeded by the League of Women Voters of New Jersey in 1920. She also launched a New England chapter of the association and had helped found the American Equal Rights Association.

Personal Life

In 1855, Stone married Henry Blackwell, a committed abolitionist who'd spent two long years trying to convince his fellow activist to marry him. Though initially taking on her husband's surname, she opted to go back to her maiden name a year after their marriage. "A wife should no more take her husband's name than he should hers," she explained in a letter to her spouse. "My name is my identity and must not be lost." At their actual wedding, both she and Henry also protested the idea via signed document that a husband has legal dominion over his wife.

The couple eventually moved to Orange, New Jersey and became the parents of a daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell.

Later Activism

At Odds with Susan B. Anthony & Elizabeth Cady Stanton

As with any high-profile political movement, fissures emerged. After the Civil War, Stone found herself at odds with fellow suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, both former allies who deeply opposed Stone's support for the 15th Amendment. While the amendment only guaranteed Black men the right to vote, Stone backed it, reasoning that it would eventually lead to the women's vote as well. Anthony and Stanton strongly disagreed; they felt that the amendment was a half-measure, and resented what they perceived as Stone's betrayal of the women's rights movement.

In 1890, however, thanks in large part to the hard work of Stone's daughter, Alice, and Stanton's daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, the women's rights movement reunified through the formation of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

Death

While Stone did live to see the end of slavery, she died 30 years before women were finally permitted to vote (August 1920), on October 18, 1893, in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Her ashes are held at a columbarium within Boston's Forest Hill Cemetery.

Fact Check

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Lucy Stone dedicated her life to improving the rights of American women. She supported the Women's National Loyal League, which was founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (though Stone and the two would later be at odds), and in 1866 helped found the American Equal Rights Association.

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Taylor Swift my mom and Emma Watson  Ruby Bridges 

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Taylor Swift my mom and Emma Watson  Ruby Bridges 

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MY baby sitter !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Kamala Harris

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she inspires me by teaching children.

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Amanda Gorman inspires me because she is a leader and her poetry and novels are very eloquent and thought-out. :)

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Rosa Parks is inspiring because she  wanted equality so she went to the front of the bus even though she was going to get arrested.
I like Marie Curie because she was engaged into her work and created new stuff.

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My mom is courageous, brave, confident, and a go-getter which I really admire.

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-she wrote books about the horror of slavery

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brave, patient, persistent

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She went to the poorest place in the world to help them.

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Mother Teresa was the founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation of women dedicated to helping the poor. Considered one of the 20th Century’s greatest humanitarians, she was canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta in 2016.

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She is inspiring because she had the courage to run for president, and achieved so many great things including becoming the first women vice president.

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they never gave up and were brave

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She inspires me because she always tells me to do the right thing and to be the best I can by being such a great example and role model in my life.

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My Mom because she is kind and shows me that I can do anything that I can put my mind to. 

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My Mom because she is kind and shows me that I can do anything that I can put my mind to. 

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Marie Curie inspires me because of all she has accomplished. She was the first women to win a Nobel Prize in Physics and later Chemisty.

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because in the Revolutionary War she was a Quaker but served as a spy which was way against her religion

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Lydia Darragh

Lydia Darragh shares much in common with Betsy Ross. Both were Quaker woman who supported the war effort and both were read out of their meetings because of that support. The place of both in history is challenged because there is no concrete proof of their stories - instead, a family member brought each one's memorable act to light.

In Darragh's case, it was her daughter Ann who recounted the story years after it played out. Since Ann's telling has some information which doesn't gibe with other accounts, some historians have dismissed it outright as a concocted tale.

When the British occupied Philadelphia on September 26, 1777, Darragh was a housewife living on Second Street. The home of her neighbor John Cadwalader was occupied by General Howe for use as his headquarters during the occupation. (Cadwalader, a member of the Philadelphia Light Horse, would figure heroically in a skirmish at Whitemarsh.)

Shortly after the British arrived, Major John Andre knocked on Darragh's door and ordered her to move out of the house so that it could be used by British officers. Lydia had two children to take care of and no place to go. She had already sent her two youngest children to stay with relatives. She decided to visit Lord Howe personally and ask for his permission to remain in her house. On the way, she met up with a British officer who serendipitously turned out to be a second cousin, Captain Barrington, from Ireland.

Due to Barrington's intervention, Darragh was allowed to stay in her home provided she kept a room available for British officers to hold meetings.

So it was, on the night of December 2, that her house served as a conference center for top British Officers. The officers listened attentively as Howe fine-tuned his plans for a major offensive against Whitemarsh on the 4th. General Howe, acting on information from his spies, heard that the Americans were moving to a new camp. He wanted to catch the Americans out in the open.

Also listening attentively was Lydia Darragh, who had positioned herself in a linen closet abutting the meeting room. Among those at Whitemarsh was Darragh's oldest son, Charles, who was serving with the 2nd Pennsylvania regiment. As the meeting was breaking up, Darragh sneaked back to bed and feigned sleep. Major John Andre knocked on the door at two different intervals, but she did not respond. On his third knock, she opened the door and acknowledged Andre who told her the officers were through with their meeting.

Lydia Darragh had two days to warn the Americans at Whitemarsh of the upcoming attack. She concocted a ruse. She went to Howe's headquarters and requested a pass from her cousin to go and get flour at a mill in Frankford. The request itself was not that unusual, as the poor were frequently given passes to purchase goods in the countryside.

Darragh set out early on the morning of the 3rd carrying an empty flour sack. She walked several miles through the snow before heading toward the Rising Sun Tavern, which was north of the city. According to her daughter, Ann, shortly before she reached the tavern she ran into Thomas Craig, a member of the Pennsylvania militia and acquaintance of her son Charles. She passed on her news of the British plans to Craig, who promised he would take it to General Washington himself.

But Elias Boudinot, Commissary of Prisoners, who was dining at the Rising Sun Tavern, told a different story. "After Dinner, a little poor looking insignificant Old Woman came in & solicited leave to go into the Country to buy some flour - While we were asking some Questions, she walked up to me and put into my hands a dirty old needle book, with various small pockets in it." Boudinot told the woman to wait for the answer to her request, but she left in the interim. Boudinot poked through the book failing to find anything useful until he got to the last pocket where he "found a piece of paper rolled up into the form of a pipe shank. On unrolling it I found information that General Howe was coming out the next morning with 5,000 men, 13 pieces of cannon, baggage wagons, and 11 boat on wheels. On comparing this with other information, I found it true and immediately rode post to headquarters."

Boudinot's telling of the story appears in his private journal. It differs from Ann Darragh's telling of the story in many details, particularly who transferred the message to Washington. Ann's account comes with a kicker, though. It was obvious to the British that the Americans had been well-prepared for their attack and further knew when they were coming. Somebody had leaked word and the British were looking for the source. Several suspects were questioned including Lydia Darragh. On December 9th, Major Andre, the spymaster who would recruit Benedict Arnold to the British side, knocked on Darragh's door once more. Andre asked Darragh if anyone had been up on the night of the 2nd. She told Andre that everyone had been asleep early. Andre believed her. He left saying, "One thing is certain the enemy had notice of our coming, were prepared for us, and we marched back like a parcel of fools. The walls must have ears."

The Quaker housewife had outwitted the British spymaster.

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Lydia Darragh shares much in common with Betsy Ross. Both were Quaker woman who supported the war effort and both were read out of their meetings because of that support. The place of both in history is challenged because there is no concrete proof of their stories - instead, a family member brought each one's memorable act to light.

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The first woman in the executive branch.

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she had so many haters and she didnt ever engage with them or stop trying

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Malala because she stood up for herself, and took a bullet for her rights.

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She risked her self of getting arrested because she was not letting her kind be disrespected back then

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Laura Danforth (head of the Masters School)

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Laura Danforth (head of the Masters School)

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true leadership, brave, tough, loving

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my mom because she gives me food and shelter

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my mom because she gives me food and shelter

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Snowboarder!

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Harriet Tubman
my mom
my nana
Michelle Obama
they are all really hard working and amazing role models

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She was a black woman who created the vaccine for leprosy but  her work was stolen from her and she didn't get credit

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Who Was Alice Ball?

Alice Ball was an African American chemist who developed the first successful treatment for those suffering from Hansen's disease (leprosy). Ball was also the very first African American and the first woman to graduate with a M.S. degree in chemistry from the College of Hawaii (now known as the University of Hawaii). Tragically, Ball died at the young age of 24. During her brief lifetime, she did not get to see the full impact of her discovery. It was not until years after her death that Ball got the proper credit she deserved.

Early Life and Family

Alice Augusta Ball was born on July 24, 1892 in Seattle, Washington to Laura, a photographer, and James P. Ball, Jr., a lawyer. She was the middle child with two older brothers, Robert and William, and a younger sister, Addie. Her grandfather, James P. Ball Sr., was a well-known photographer and was amongst the first to practice daguerreotype photography, a process of printing photographs onto metal plates. The family enjoyed a middle-class lifestyle. In 1903, they moved from chilly Seattle to the warm weather of Honolulu in hopes that James Ball Sr.'s, arthritis pains would be alleviated. Sadly, James Ball Sr. died shortly after their move and the family relocated back to Seattle. Ball excelled at Seattle High School, graduated in 1910, and went onto obtain multiple graduate degrees from the University of Washington and the College of Hawaii.

Leprosy Treatment - The Ball Method

After earning undergraduate degrees in pharmaceutical chemistry (1912) and pharmacy (1914) from the University of Washington, Alice Ball transferred to the College of Hawaii (now known as the University of Hawaii) and became the very first African American and the very first woman to graduate with a M.S. degree in chemistry in 1915. She was offered a teaching and research position there and became the institution's very first woman chemistry instructor. She was only 23 years old.

As a laboratory researcher, Ball worked extensively to develop a successful treatment for those suffering from Hansen's disease (leprosy). Her research led her to create the first injectable leprosy treatment using oil from the chaulmoogra tree, which up until then, was only a moderately successful topical agent that was used in Chinese and Indian medicine. Ball successfully isolated the oil into fatty acid components of different molecular weights allowing her to manipulate the oil into a water soluble injectable form. Ball's scientific rigor resulted in a highly successful method to alleviate leprosy symptoms, later known as the "Ball Method," that was used on thousands of infected individuals for over thirty years until sulfone drugs were introduced.

The "Ball Method" was so successful, leprosy patients were discharged from hospitals and facilities across the globe including from Kalaupapa, an isolation facility on the north shore of Molokai, Hawaii where thousands of people suffering from leprosy died in years prior. Thanks to Alice Ball, these banished individuals could now return to their families, free from the symptoms of leprosy.

Death and Discovery Credit Stolen

Tragically, Ball died on December 31, 1916, at the young age of 24 after complications resulting from inhaling chlorine gas in a lab teaching accident. During her brief lifetime, she did not get to see the full impact of her discovery. What's more, following her death, the president of the College of Hawaii, Dr. Arthur Dean, continued Ball's research without giving her credit for the discovery. Dean even claimed her discovery for himself, calling it the "Dean Method." Unfortunately, it was commonplace for men to take the credit of women's discoveries and Ball fell victim to this practice.

In 1922, six years after her death, Dr. Harry T. Hollmann, the assistant surgeon at Kalihi Hospital who originally encouraged Ball to explore chaulmoogra oil, published a paper giving Ball the proper credit she deserved. Even so, Ball remained largely forgotten from scientific history until recently.

Long Overdue Accolades

In 2000, the University of Hawaii-Mānoa placed a bronze plaque in front of a chaulmoogra tree on campus to honor Ball's life and her important discovery. Former Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii, Mazie Hirono, also declared February 29 "Alice Ball Day." In 2007, the University of Hawaii posthumously awarded her with the Regents' Medal of Distinction.

In 2017, Paul Wermager, a scholar who has been researching, publishing and lecturing about Ball for years at the University of Hawaii-Mānoa, established The Alice Augusta Ball endowed scholarship to support students in the College of Natural Sciences pursuing a degree in chemistry, biology or microbiology. Acknowledging the importance of Ball's work through this scholarship, Wermager stated:

"Not only did she overcome the racial and gender barriers of her time to become one of the very few African American women to earn a master's degree in chemistry, [but she] also developed the first useful treatment for Hansen's disease. Her amazing life was cut too short at the age of 24. Who knows what other marvelous work she could have accomplished had she lived."

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Alice Ball was an African American chemist who developed the first successful treatment for those suffering from Hansen's disease (leprosy). Ball was also the very first African American and the first woman to graduate with a M.S. degree in chemistry from the College of Hawaii (now known as the University of Hawaii).

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Rosa Parks is very inspiring because she has the courage to refuse to give up her seat to a white man knowing she can go to jail.  

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Rosa Parks is very inspiring because she has the courage to refuse to give up her seat to a white man knowing she can go to jail.  

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She uses her platform as a female athlete to bring social justice issues to the forefront.
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/09/933018609/soccer-star-megan-rapinoe-on-equal-pay-and-what-the-u-s-flag-means-to-her

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FIRST CAP: July 23, 2006 vs. Republic of Ireland (San Diego, Calif.)Oct. 1, 2006 vs. Chinese Taipei (two goals; Carson, Calif.)

NaTIONAL TEAM HIGHLIGHTS

Heading into her fourth FIFA Women's World Cup, Rapinoe ranks in the top 10 in USWNT history in both goals and assists and is one of the most impactful players - on and off the field - in USWNT history.

As every sports fan knows, Rapinoe had an epic 2019 as she collected numerous prestigious awards including the Golden Ball and Golden Boot at the World Cup, The Best FIFA Women's Player of the Year, the France Football Ballon d'Or and the Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year. Her penalty kick goal in the World Cup Final was her 50th career goal.

Made three appearances at the 2022 Concacaf W Championship, helping the USA qualify for both the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup and the 2024 Summer Olympics.

A three-time Olympian, Rapinoe helped the USA capture gold at the 2012 London Olympics, highlighted by a two-goal performance in the epic semifinal match against Canada.

Netted a brace in the 2021 Olympic Bronze Medal match against Australia, become the first player in USWNT history to have multiple multi-goal games at the Olympics.

PREVIOUS WORLD CUP EXPERIENCE

A two-time Women's World Cup Champion, Rapinoe won the Golden Ball as the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup best player and the Golden Boot as the top scorer with six goals and three assists.

After scoring in the group stage opener against Thailand in 2019, Rapinoe scored both goals in the USA's Round of 16 win over Spain and tallied twice again in the epic quarterfinal victory over France before converting the game-winning penalty kick in the final against the Netherlands.

A member 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup champions, she played 462 minutes while starting six games (missing the quarterfinal vs. China PR due to yellow card suspension).

Played in all six games in the 2011 World Cup, starting the group match against Sweden and the World Cup Final while recording one goal and three assists throughout the tournament.

Rapinoe world-wide recognition for sending in the cross that Abby Wambach headed home in the dying seconds of extra time against Brazil in the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup quarterfinal.

CLUB HIGHLIGHTS

An 11-year-veteran of the NWSL, Rapinoe has spent her entire NWSL career in Seattle, helping the franchise win three NWSL Shields (2014, 2015, 2022)

In 2018, Rapinoe was a finalist for NWSL and was named to the NWSL Best XI.

Played briefly in France for Olympique Lyonnais, helping Lyon win both the Coupe de France and league titles in the 2012-13 season.

PERSONAL

Daughter of Denise and Jim Rapinoe, she has five siblings including a twin sister, Rachael.

Engaged to WNBA legend Sue Bird.

On July 1, 2022, it was announced that Rapinoe had been selected by President Joe Biden to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, which she received at the White House on July 7.

Rapinoe is the first soccer player to receive the award and one of just six female athletes or coaches to be so honored along with fellow 2022 recipient and Olympic gold medal gymnast Simone Biles, tennis player and women's rights pioneer Billie Jean King, 1932 Summer Olympics track and field gold medalist and professional golfer Babe Didrikson Zaharias, women's basketball legend Pat Summitt and professional golfer Annika Sörenstam.

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Megan Rapinoe | USWNT | U.S. Soccer Official Site

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Heading into her fourth FIFA Women's World Cup, Rapinoe ranks in the top 10 in USWNT history in both goals and assists and is one of the most impactful players - on and off the field - in USWNT history.

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-my mom
-Kamala Harris
-Emma Watson

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Kamala Harris

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She stood up for equality and believed in helping others

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Malala inspires me because she continues to fight for women's education, despite everything she's been through.

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My blind grandmother who was a go-getter and always on the side of women's rights.

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My blind grandmother who was a go-getter and always on the side of women's rights.

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Early Life and Family

Serena Jameka Williams was born on September 26, 1981, in Saginaw, Michigan, to Richard and Oracene Williams. The youngest of Richard's five daughters, Serena and her sister Venus would grow up to become great tennis champions.

Serena's father - a former sharecropper from Louisiana determined to see his two youngest girls succeed - used what he'd gleaned from tennis books and videos to instruct Serena and Venus on how to play the game. At the age of three, practicing on a court not far from the family's new Compton, California, home, Serena withstood the rigors of daily two-hour practices from her father.

The fact that the family had relocated to Compton was no accident. With its high rate of gang activity, Richard wanted to expose his daughters to the ugly possibilities of life "if they did not work hard and get an education." In this setting, on courts that were riddled with potholes and sometimes missing nets, Serena and Venus cut their teeth on the game of tennis and the requirements for persevering in a tough climate.

By 1991, Serena was 46-3 on the junior United States Tennis Association tour and ranked first in the 10-and-under division. Sensing his girls needed better instruction to become successful professionals, he moved his family again - this time to Florida. There, Richard let go of some of his coaching responsibilities, but not the management of Serena's and Venus' career. Wary of his daughters burning out too quickly, he scaled back their junior tournament schedule.
READ MORE: Serena and Venus Williams: How Their Father Made Them Tennis Stars
The Williams Sisters

Serena and her older sister Venus were groomed for a tennis career from the age of three years old by their father. With their signature style and play, Venus and Serena changed the look of their sport. Their sheer power and athletic ability overwhelmed opponents, and their sense of style and presence made them standout celebrities on the court. The close-knit sisters lived together for more than a dozen years in a gated Palm Beach Gardens enclave in Florida, but they went their separate ways after Serena bought a mansion in nearby Jupiter in December 2013.

In 1999, Serena beat out her sister Venus in their race to the family's first Grand Slam win when she captured the U.S. Open title. It set the stage for a run of high-powered, high-profile victories for both Williams sisters.

In 2008, Serena and Venus teamed up to capture a second women's doubles Olympic gold medal at the Beijing Games. The next year, Serena and Venus purchased shares of the Miami Dolphins to become the first African American women to own part of an NFL team.

At the 2012 Summer Olympics, Serena claimed her fourth overall Olympic gold medal by teaming with sister Venus to defeat Czech Republic stars Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka in women's doubles.

Seeking to add to her hardware collection in the summer of 2015, Williams had to overcome big sister Venus to advance past the fourth round at Wimbledon. A few days later, she defeated Garbine Muguruza in the final to claim her second career "Serena Slam" and become the oldest Grand Slam singles champion in the Open era.

At the 2015 U.S. Open, Williams again squared off with Venus in a tough quarterfinal matchup, this time pulling away in the deciding third set. The outcome left her two wins shy of the calendar year Grand Slam, a feat accomplished by just three women in the sport's history. But it was not to be. In a shocking upset, unseeded Roberta Vinci, ranked No. 43 in the world, dashed Williams' quest by pulling out a 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 win in the semifinals.

Just hours after her singles win at Wimbledon in 2016, Serena and Venus won the doubles championship, their sixth Wimbledon win together.

At the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, the Williams sisters experienced a shocking upset when they were bounced out of the first round of women's doubles at the Rio Olympics by Czech duo Lucie Safarova and Barbora Strycova. The Williams sisters had originally been seeded as no. 1, had an Olympic record of 15-0, and had won gold three times previously.

Williams scored a historic victory at the 2017 Australian Open, winning her 23rd Grand Slam title after defeating her sister Venus, 6-4 6-4. With her 23rd win, she surpassed Steffi Graf's total and captured the world number one ranking.

Reflecting on her victory, Williams credited her sister as an inspiration. "I would really like to take this moment to congratulate Venus, she is an amazing person," she said. "There is no way I would be at 23 without her. There is no way I would be at one without her. She is my inspiration, she is the only reason. I am standing here today and the only reason that the Williams sisters exist."

'The Serena Slam'

In 1995 Serena turned pro. Two years later, she was already No. 99 in the world rankings - up from No. 304 just 12 months before. A year later, she graduated high school and almost immediately inked a $12 million shoe deal with Puma.

In 2002, Serena won the French Open, the U.S. Open, and Wimbledon, defeating sister Venus in the finals of each tournament. She captured her first Australian Open in 2003, making her one of only six women in the Open era to complete a career Grand Slam. The win also fulfilled her desire to hold all four major titles simultaneously to comprise what she'd dubbed "The Serena Slam."

Burnout & Comeback

In August 2003, Serena underwent knee surgery, and in September her half-sister Yetunde Price was murdered in Los Angeles, California. Three years later, Serena seemed burned out. Plagued by injuries, and just a general lack of motivation to stay fit or compete at the same level she once had, Serena saw her tennis ranking slump to 139.

Serena credited her faith as a Jehovah's Witness, as well as a life-changing journey she made to West Africa, for renewing her pride and competitive fire. In 2008, she won the U.S. Open. By 2009, Williams reclaimed her place atop the world's rankings, winning both the 2009 Australian Open singles (for the fourth time) and Wimbledon 2009 singles (for the third time). She also won the doubles matches at both the Australian Open and Wimbledon that year.

Probation

Williams made headlines in September 2009, when she blasted a lineswoman for a foot-fault called near the end of a semifinal loss to eventual champion Kim Clijsters at the U.S. Open. The profanity-laced outburst included finger pointing and, according to the lineswoman, an alleged threat from Serena against her life.

Williams downplayed what happened, refuting the allegation that she'd threatened the woman. But the incident did not go over well with the tennis-viewing public, nor the U.S. Tennis Association, which fined her $10,000 on the spot. Two months later, she was placed on two-year probation and ordered to pay another $82,500 to the Grand Slam committee for the episode, the largest punishment ever levied against a tennis player.

By early 2010, Senena was back on track, winning the Australian Open singles and doubles matches as well as her fourth Wimbledon singles championship.

Injuries and Retirement Speculation

In 2011, Serena suffered a series of health scares after doctors found a blood clot in one of her lungs, which kept her away from tennis for several months. Following several procedures, including one to remove a hematoma, speculation rose as to whether Williams would retire from the sport.

Serena's health improved by September 2011, however, and she looked like her old dominant self at the U.S. Open before falling to Samantha Stosur in the finals.

Williams stumbled badly at the 2012 French Open, enduring a first-round loss for the first time at a major tournament. But she was back in top form in London in July 2012, defeating 23-year-old Agnieszka Radwanska in an emotional three sets to claim her fifth Wimbledon singles title and first major championship in two years.

At the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, Serena beat Maria Sharapova to take her first gold medal in women's singles.

15th and 16th Grand Slam Titles

Serena continued her winning streak to her next Grand Slam event. In September 2012, she beat out rival Victoria Azarenka to take the singles title at the U.S. Open. According to USA Today, Williams wasn't sure that she'd emerge victorious. "I honestly can't believe I won. I was really preparing my runner-up speech, because I thought, 'Man, she's playing so great.'"

By this time, Serena had captured 15 Grand Slam singles titles and 13 Grand Slam doubles titles. "I would like to leave a mark," Serena once said about her standing in the tennis world. "I think obviously I will, due to the fact that I'm doing something different in tennis. But I don't think I could ever reach something like a Martina Navratilova - I don't think I'd ever play that long - but who knows? I think I'll leave a mark regardless."

In June 2013, Serena took her second French Open title - as well as her 16th Grand Slam singles title - in a 6-4, 6-4 victory over defending champion Sharapova. "I'm still a little bit upset about that loss last year," Serena said in an interview with ESPN following the match. "But it's all about, for me, how you recover. I think I've always said a champion isn't about how much they win, but it's about how they recover from their downs, whether it's an injury or whether it's a loss."

2013 Wimbledon Loss and U.S. Open Win

Nearly one month later, Serena competed at Wimbledon, where she suffered a shocking loss (6-2, 1-6, 6-4) in the fourth round to Germany's Sabine Lisicki, the No. 23 seed.

Her career-best 34-match winning streak over, Serena told Sports Illustrated, "I don't think it's a huge shock. [Lisicki] is a great player. Her ranking has no effect on what she should be. She should be ranked higher. She just has a super, super game to play well on grass."

At the 2013 U.S. Open, Serena made a strong showing. She knocked out her younger rival Sloane Stephens in the fourth round before upending Azarenka to clinch the U.S. Open title. It was the second year in a row that the pair had faced off in the finals.

20th Grand Slam

Serena clinched her third straight and sixth overall U.S. Open singles title in 2014 by defeating her good friend Caroline Wozniacki. Her winning ways carried into the new year, as she beat Sharapova to claim the 2015 Australian Open championship. At the French Open in June, Serena managed to overcome illness to win the tournament for the third time and claim her 20th Grand Slam singles title, good for third place all-time.

"When I was a little girl, in California, my father and my mother wanted me to play tennis," she told the crowd in French after her victory. "And now I'm here, with 20 Grand Slam titles."

2016 Losses and Wins

Serena opened 2016 by advancing to the Australian Open final, where she lost in three sets to Angelique Kerber. After notching career WTA title No. 70 with a win at the Italian Open, she advanced to a French Open final rematch with Muguruza, but this time succumbed to the Spanish player in straight sets.

On July 9, 2016, Serena found her way back to victory, defeating Kerber 7-5, 6-3 at Wimbledon and winning her 22nd grand slam title. With her historic win, Serena tied Steffi Graf for the most major championships in the Open era of professional tennis, which started in 1968.

"I have definitely had some sleepless nights with a lot of stuff, coming so close and feeling it and not being able to get there," Serena told reporters. "This tournament I came in with a different mindset. In Melbourne I thought I played well but Angelique played great, and better. So I knew going into this one I needed to be calm and be confident and play the tennis I've been playing for well over a decade."

At the 2016 U.S. Open, Serena suffered another surprising defeat, leaving the competition early after she was defeated by Karolina Pliskova in their semifinal match. With the loss, she also gave up the No. 1 ranking which she'd held for 186 weeks.

23rd Grand Slam, Pregnancy and Birth

Serena went on to clinch the 2017 Australian Open to win her 23rd Grand Slam title. Later that year, she revealed she was two months pregnant during the game. She gave birth to her daughter in September and returned to the courts in late December 2017, hoping to shake off the rust in time to defend her Australian Open title.

However, Williams withdrew from the opening Grand Slam tournament in early 2018, noting she wasn't quite ready yet after the birth of her daughter in September. "I can compete-but I don't want to just compete, I want to do far better than that and to do so, I will need a little more time," she said.

Serena finally returned to competition on February 11, teaming up with Venus for a doubles match in Fed Cup play. Clad in her "Wakanda-inspired catsuit," Williams looked to be rounding into form at the French Open, before pulling out with a pectoral injury prior to her eagerly anticipated fourth-round match against Sharapova. Recovering from the setback, she proceeded to march through the Wimbledon women's draw in July, her run ending with a loss to Kerber in the final.

At the end of the month, just before a match against Johanna Konta at the Mubadala Silicon Valley Classic, Serena learned that the man who murdered her half-sister had been paroled three years short of his full sentence. She subsequently suffered a lopsided defeat, and later told Time how heavily the news weighed on her during the match.

The star athlete was back in the news in late August when French Tennis Federation President Bernard Giudicelli said he was instituting a new dress code at the French Open to prevent the reappearance of the notorious catsuit. After insisting she had no problem with the ruling, Williams went on to wear a custom-designed tutu for the start of U.S. Open play, in which she easily dispatched her early competition en route to a third-round matchup with big sister Venus.

2018 U.S. Open and 2019 Runner-up Finishes

Just one year after giving birth, Serena was back in top form at the 2018 U.S. Open. During the final match against Japan's Naomi Osaka, Williams got in a heated dispute with the umpire after he determined that her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, was giving her hand signals from the stands, so the umpire gave her a coaching violation.

Serena denied any cheating and accused him of sexism and attacking her character. "You owe me an apology!" she said. She then got a point penalty for smashing her racket and a penalty for verbal abuse. Osaka won the match, 6-2, 6-4, and Williams was later fined $17,000 for the incident.

At the 2019 Australian Open, the site of her last Grand Slam crown, Serena played her way into a quarterfinal match against Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic. However, she lost despite being up 5-1 in the third set, a stunning collapse for a champion known for her nerves of steel.

A few months later, Serena was outplayed in a third-round French Open loss to 20-year-old American Sofia Kenen. She got back on track and advanced to the Wimbledon final, before suffering a straight-set loss to Romania's Simona Halep. Serena then breezed through her draw at the 2019 U.S. Open but was unable to overcome 19-year-old Canadian Bianca Andreescu in the final.

Although she finished the year without a Grand Slam win, Williams earned a consolation prize by being named the AP Female Athlete of the Decade.

2020 U.S. Open and 2021 Australian Open

Taking a medical time out after a third-set point during the semifinals on September 10, 2020, Williams called over her trainer while clutching her left ankle. She eventually lost to Victoria Azarenka, 1-6, 6-3 and 6-3.

Williams and Osaka faced off again in the semifinal of the 2021 Australian Open, with Osaka winning 6-3, 6-4.

Grand Slams

Over the course of her career, Serena Williams has won a record 23 Grand Slam singles titles, beginning in 1999 with the U.S. Open title. Her most recent victory came with the 2017 Australian Open when she surpassed Steffi Graf 's record for most wins in the Open era.

Husband and Daughter

In December 2016, Williams became engaged to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. On November 16, 2017, Williams and Ohanian were married at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, Louisiana. Serena wore a stunning Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen dress, and the list of celebrity guests in attendance included Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian West and Eva Longoria.

In April 2017, Williams hinted that she was pregnant in a post on Snapchat showing her baby belly with the caption "20 weeks," though the posting was deleted a few minutes later.

Williams was indeed pregnant, and she gave birth to daughter Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. on September 1, 2017. The tennis great posted a photo with her baby on Instagram and shared the journey of her pregnancy in a video posted on her website and on YouTube.

In the cover story for the February 2018 edition of Vogue, Williams revealed the major health complications that came with giving birth to Alexis Olympia. After undergoing an emergency cesarean section, Williams experienced sudden shortness of breath, leading to the discovery of blood clots in her lungs. Additionally, doctors found a large hematoma in her abdomen that had been caused by hemorrhaging at the site of her C-section.

Following multiple surgeries, Williams was able to return home after a week. However, she was then unable to get out of bed for another six weeks, leaving her feeling helpless at times when it came to tending to her newborn. Despite the toll it took on her emotions, she told Vogue she was willing to consider having more children, but understandably was in no rush to do so.

TV, Books & Fashion

Proving to have much more than just tennis clout, Serena expanded her brand into film, television, and fashion. She developed her own Aneres line of clothing, and in 2002 People magazine selected her as one of its 25 Most Intriguing People.

Essence magazine later called her one of the country's 50 Most Inspiring African Americans. She's also made television appearances, and lent her voice to shows such as The Simpsons.

Seeking to provide educational opportunities for underprivileged youth around the world, the tennis star formed the Serena Williams Foundation and built schools in Africa.

In 2010, Williams had released an autobiography, Queen of the Court.

Starting in May 2018, HBO released the first of a five-chapter doc series on Williams called Being Serena. Around that time, the athlete-entrepreneur launched a new eponymous clothing line.

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Strong, loving, successful, kind.

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My grandmother ... she barely made it to the US from Mexico and pursued the American dream.