Happy Women's Day !

 For  International Women's Day (or rather International Day for Women's Rights), I have created posters for the library to put the spotlight on the work of female writers. Indeed, when talking about the literature of different countries, we are usually more familiar with male writers rather than female writers when their works are as significant as their male counterparts'. 

For this reason, I chose female writers from around the world and from different times. Some of them need no introduction, as is the case for Agatha Christie also known as the "Queen of Crime" but also Jane Austen, whose books have been adapted in films and series a large number of times. 

Others are reknown for their feminist writings, sharing a glimpse of what it means to be a woman. With their strong political opinions, they fought in their own times against prejudices and for women's rights. For this, I could name Simone de Beauvoir, George Sand and Olympe de Gouges. 

However, the feminist fight is linked to so many others, as its goal is to achieve equality between every human being. Colette and Sappho are two examples of female writers who influenced in their own way the LGBT+ movement before it even existed, Sappho by giving her name to lesbians with the word "sapphism" and Colette by being openly bisexual, a risk in the late 19th century France. 

Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou are examples of other writers who chose to write about feminism while fighting against racism and segregation in the US (those are deeply linked fights). 

But what is certain is that all of them redefined literature with their writings. Mary Shelley can be considered a pioneer, since her novel Frankestein is qualified as one of the earliest example of science fiction. Virginia Woolf is one of the first writers to use the stream of consciousness in her novels and many of our contemporary writers have recognised being influenced by her writings. To name a few : Margaret Atwood (The handmaid's tale), Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One hundred years of Solitude, also won a Nobel Prize) and Toni Morrison. For others, the importance of their writings have been internationally recognised when they received the Nobel prize, namely Hang Kang, a south Korean author, and Olga Tokarczuk. 

I could have chosen other exceptional female writers but I was unfortunately limited by the room on the walls. I chose writers I knew and liked, some I thought were worth discovering. Some of them are French (because I am always eager to help people discover more about my country), others are American, English, Polish and Korean. By choosing women from different countries and backgrounds, I wanted to show the impact women have all over the world and that despite our differences, our fights are the same. I will share with you here the posters in English, you can discover the ones in Polish directly in the library. See you there :)

P.S. : If you also have female writers you love and want to share about them, don't hesitate to drop a comment, I would love to discover them :). 

Adèle