Winning women
Barbara Else tells Dionne Christian she was surprised to have so many candidates for her collection of prominent New Zealand women
If Barbara Else had been influenced by the real-life women she read about as a child, she might have thought her likely career options were physicist/chemist, nurse or — at the outside — prison reformer. When it came to books about the great and the good, Else recalls there were two women who were always mentioned, scientist Marie Curie and nurse Florence Nightingale, and, sometimes, social reformer Elizabeth Fry.
“There were rarely any writers and certainly no artists,” she says, adding that her heroines were found in the fiction, like Little Women, she avidly consumed.
Else has now found herself part of the biggest global publishing craze of the last two years. She’s written Go Girl: A Storybook of Epic NZ Women, which starts with warrior Ahumai Te Paerata (1824-1908) and includes some 47 other female politicians and lawyers, missionaries and social reformers, doctors and scientists, artists, writers and musicians, sportswomen and entrepreneurs to end with singer Lorde and golfer Lydia Ko.
It’s New Zealand’s own version of the phenomenally successful Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls by Italian writers Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo. Released in 2016, this features 100 women who have shaped the world but have frequently been excluded from grand historical narratives.
In less than two years, Rebel Girls has sold one million copies sold (and counting), been translated into more than 40 languages and led to a sequel. In other countries — Australia included — publishers have wanted home-grown collections.
Multi award-winning writer Else, who’s written novels for children and adults and edited several story collections, was asked by Penguin Random House to pen a New Zealand anthology. Initially she hesitated not because she thought there’d be a shortage of subjects; at one point, there was a list of 200 names.
Her concern was around writing concise nonfiction vignettes which would be informative but revealing and engaging for younger readers (and appeal to their parents and grandparents most likely to buy such a book for them).
“But it just sounded like such a fabulous idea to encourage girls to keep on thinking widely about what kind of career they want because girls seem to — still — self-limit. Research shows that by the time they’re just 6 or 7, social pressures are already setting in. This was too good an opportunity to show girls how successful women become successful.”
Illustrated by nine different female artists, each Go Girl spread is four pages featuring biographical information, a story and lavish illustration.
Asked to pick who she’d most like to go back in history and have dinner with, Else settles on artist Rita Angus, astronomer Beatrice Tinsley — “a sad story but what a brilliant mind she must have had” — fellow writer Janet Frame, archer Neroli Fairhall and suffragette Kate Sheppard. Else says from her research, it appears Sheppard was softly but firmly spoken which often indicates an impressive steeliness.
And she’s received many warm thank you notes from women who feature in the book.
“I just hope it gives any child or young woman — or even older woman who reads it — a bit more confidence about what they want to achieve or focus on,” says Else. “I feel I have learned a lot through this. The story of Ahumai Te Paerata was quite hard to write but I think I’ve realised if you’ve got hard material, just address it.”
And what does Else say to the critics? “Well, for a long time, since the beginning of children’s books, really, stories have been focused on boys and men, so it’s time we addressed that balance.”
However, she says many of those stories perpetuate stereotypes about men and masculinity with an emphasis on physical strength and derring-do achievements. She points to the soon-to-be-released book Stories for Boys Who Dare to be Different (see page 8) as a much-needed addition to how we talk about male achievement.
That book, released next week, includes 100 stories of famous and not-so-famous men who frequently had to go against the grain to achieve and it’s not limited to sportsmen and explorers, kings and soldiers.
“I think the ideal situation will be when we get books for boys and girls together with all sorts of diverse people and achievements. Just like real life,” she says.