“I tell students that the opportunities I had were a result of having a good educational background. Education is what allows you to stand out.”

                                                    -Ellen Ochoa

Astronaut, Scientist 1958-Present

Selected by NASA in 1990, Ochoa became the world's first Hispanic female astronaut in 1991. She graduated from Grossmont High School in La Mesa, California, in 1975 and received a bachelor of science degree in physics from San Diego State University in 1980. She then went on to attend Stanford University, where she received a master of science degree and doctorate in electrical engineering.

A mission specialist and flight engineer, Ochoa is a veteran of four space flights, logging more than 950 hours in space. Her technical assignments have included flight software and computer hardware development and robotics development, testing, and training. She has served as Assistant for Space Station to the Chief of the Astronaut Office, lead spacecraft communicator in Mission Control and Acting Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office. She currently serves as Director of Flight Crew Operations at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

Ochoa's numerous awards include NASA's Exceptional Service Medal (1997), Outstanding Leadership Medal (1995) and Space Flight Medals (2002, 1999, 1994, 1993).

Scholar 1942-2004

In 1969, Anzaldua received her B.A. in English, Art, and Secondary Education from Pan American University. She then earned an M.A. in English and Education from the University of Texas. As a teacher, Anzalda instructed a wide variety of students. She first taught in a bilingual preschool program, then in a Special Education program for mentally and emotionally handicapped students. Later, she worked to educate college students about feminism, Chicano studies, and creative writing at a number of universities, including the University of Texas at Austin, Vermont College of Norwich University, and San Francisco State University. Anzaldua died of diabetes complications on May 15, 2004.

During her lifetime, Anzaldua won numerous awards for her work, such as the Lambda Lesbian Small Book Press Award for Haciendo Cara, an NEA Fiction Award, the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award for This Bridge Called My Back, and the Sappho Award of Distinction. In addition, her text Borderlands/La Frontera was selected by the Literary Journal as one of the 38 Best Books of 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera examines the condition of women in Chicano and Latino culture, Chicanos in white American society, and lesbians in the straight world. Through a combination of history and personal narrative, Anzalda allows the reader both a close-up and distanced view into a life of alienation and isolation as a prisoner in the borderlands between cultures. Structurally the book is divided in half by essay and poetry. The first section is a personal narrative in which Anzaldua addresses many cultural issues, from religion to sexuality to immigration. But the recurring focus of Anzaldua's essays revolves around language, anger, and immersion of the reader into her world.

1. Jones E., Jones E., Olson J., Teale R.. (2005). University of Minnesota. Retrieved`, Sep 10 2010 from http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/anzaldua.php

"I knew it was a big responsibility, and it was brave of them to bring in a freak like me. I really wanted to do it right. I wanted to encourage the teens to be whatever helps them stay alive in this mad, mad world. I wanted to encourage them not to be mean, and not let the bullies get away with being bullies.” - Kate Bornstein

Kate Bornstein
March 15 1948 - Present

KATE BORNSTEIN is an author, playwright and performance artist whose latest book is "Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives To Suicide For Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws."

Other published works include the books "Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us"; "My Gender Workbook"; and the cyber-romance-action novel, "Nearly Roadkill," with co-author Caitlin Sullivan. Kate's plays and performance pieces include Strangers in Paradox, Hidden: A Gender, The Opposite Sex Is Neither, Virtually Yours, y2kate: gender virus 2000.

Kate's books are taught in over 120 colleges and universities around the world; and ze has performed hir work live on college campuses, and in theaters and performance spaces across the USA, as well as in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Austria. She is currently touring colleges, youth conferences and high schools, speaking and leading workshops on the subjects of sex, gender, and alternatives to teen suicide.

Kate was born outside of Fargo, North Dakota in a log cabin ze helped hir parents build. Hir father was a Lutheran minister, and hir mother was Miss Betty Crocker, 1939. Kate has lived in the queer ghettos of Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle. Ze currently lives with hir partner--sex pioneer, writer and performance artist Barbara Carrellas--in New York City, along with their pug, three cats, and turtle.

1. Kate Bornstein. (2010). katebornstein.typepad.com. Retrieved Oct 19 2010 from http://katebornstein.typepad.com/about.html

“I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement. “
Angela Davis

Angela Davis
1944-Present
 

Writer, activist, educator. Born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama. Angela Davis is best known as a radical African American educator and activist for civil rights and other social issues. She knew about racial prejudice from her experiences with discrimination growing up in Alabama. As a teenager, Davis organized interracial study groups, which were broken up by the police. She also knew several of the young African American girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing of 1963.

Angela Davis later moved north and went to Brandeis University in Massachusetts where she studied philosophy with Herbert Marcuse. As a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, in the late 1960s, she joined several groups, including the Black Panthers. But she spent most of her time working with the Che-Lumumba Club, which was all-black branch of the Communist Party.

Outside of academia, Angela Davis had become a strong supporter of three prison inmates of Soledad Prison known as the Soledad brothers (they were not related). These three men—John W. Cluchette, Fleeta Drumgo, and George Lester Jackson—were accused of killing a prison guard after several African American inmates had been killed in a fight by another guard. Some thought these prisoners were being used as scapegoats because of the political work within the prison.

During Jackson's trial in August 1970, an escape attempt was made and several people in the courtroom were killed. Angela Davis was brought up on several charges, including murder, for her alleged part in the event. There were two main pieces of evidence used at trial: the guns used were registered to her, and she was reportedly in love with Jackson. After spending roughly 18 months in jail, Davis was acquitted in June 1972.

After spending time traveling and lecturing, Angela Davis returned to teaching. Today, she is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she teaches courses on the history of consciousness. Davis is the author of several books, including Women, Race, and Class (1980) and Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003).

© 2010 A&E Television Networks. All rights reserved.

• Angela Davis. (2010). Biography.com. Retrieved 11:03, Oct 22 2010 from http://www.biography.com/articles/Angela-Davis-9267589

Tee A. Corinne
November 3, 1943 -
August 27, 2006

Tee A. Corinne is an artist, writer, and editor whose published work includes four books of fiction, two photo books, and the infamous (or justly famous) Cunt Coloring Book.

Her art has been widely published in anthologies and periodicals. She co-founded the Lesbian and Bisexual Caucus of the Women's Caucus for Art and the Gay and Lesbian Caucus (now Queer Caucus for Art), both affiliated societies of the College Art Association.

According to Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia, "Corinne is one of the most visible and accessible artists in the world."

(Biography credited to the book Intimacies, photos by Tee A. Corinne with essays by Tee A. Corinne and Tamsin Wilton.)          

1. Tee Corinne. (2006). http://www.teeacorinneart.com/. Retrieved Oct 19 2010 from http://www.teeacorinneart.com/

“As a human rights issue, the effort to end violence against women becomes a government's obligation, not just a good idea.”
Charlotte Bunch

Charlotte Ann Bunch
(1944 - )

A pioneering strategist and organizer, Charlotte Bunch is one of the foremost advocates of international attention to women's issues, and the inclusion of gender and sexual orientation on global human rights agenda.

A 1966 Magna Cum Laude graduate of Duke University, Bunch became active on the national scene as a writer, lesbian activist and lecturer, particularly in movements for women's liberation and women's rights. She created and edited Quest: A Feminist Journal (1974), one of the first and the leading journals to promote analysis and policy making to improve women's status in society.

Expanding her activities into the international arena, Bunch built an international network of women, united by common concerns, and prepared by education and training for effective action. Through her speeches and organizing at international conferences, she served as a critical catalyst for action on women's issues. For example, her speech to Amnesty International in 1989 marked the beginning of that organization's efforts to address gender-specific human rights issues. Her leadership was crucial to the adoption by the 1993 U.N. Conference on Human Rights, in Vienna, of strong support for women, and at the 1995 U.N. Conference on Human Rights, in Beijing, for supporting woman's place in human rights advocacy.

In 1989, Bunch founded The Center for Women's Global Leadership at Douglass College, Rutgers University, where she serves as Director and Professor of Urban Studies. Through the Center, she continues her role as leader of national and international networking, advocacy and training, to advance women's well-being around the world.    

1. Charlotte Ann Bunch. (2010). National Women's Hall of Fame. Retrieved from: http://www.greatwomen.org/women.php?action=viewone&id=30

"The most notable fact our culture imprints on women is the sense of our limits. The most important thing one woman can do for another is to illuminate and expand her sense of actual possibilities."

Adrienne Rich

1929 - Present

Born in Baltimore, Adrienne Rich describes her mother and grandmother as "frustrated artists," whose talents were denied expression by culture and circumstance. Perhaps their example, along with her father's encouragement, sparked her desire to become a writer at a time when women were still trying to prove themselves in a male-dominated arena. After graduating from Radcliffe in 1951, Rich was recognized for her poetry in the same year by W. H. Auden, who selected her first book, A Change of World, for the coveted Yale Younger Poets series. Rich's early poetry was influenced primarily by male writers, including Frost, Thomas, Donne, Auden, Stevens, and Yeats. For many young women, these men were the poets studied in high school and university classes, talked about in magazines and journals, and invited to speak at universities. Young women were exposed to relatively little poetry written by other women, and as such were taught implicitly that to write well meant to write as well as a male poet. For writers like Rich, Plath, and Sexton the struggle to find female role models and express female experience was beginning with their own work. Of course, there were examples of women poets mentoring one another, most notably the mentorship of Elizabeth Bishop by Marianne Moore, but this proved to be the exception rather than the rule. By the end of the 1950s and early 1960s, however, Rich's poetry had changed markedly as she began exploring women's issues and moving away from formal poetry toward a free verse that she saw as less patriarchal and more in tune with her true voice.

In the late 1960s, Rich, along with her husband, became active in radical politics, especially protests against the Vietnam War. In addition, she taught minority students in urban New York City, an experience that began her lifelong commitment to education, a subject that would return in her essays. Not surprisingly, her poetry reflected this intense interest in politics. This later verse features fragmented language, raw images, and looser form. At this time, Rich also began identifying herself and her work with the growing feminist movement; she also identified as a lesbian. This lesbian consciousness led to the development of poems such as "Transcendental Etude" and "The Floating Poem" that dealt explicitly with lesbian love and sex. In the 1970s, Rich began exploring feminism through essay writing. Her most famous collection of prose, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, combines personal accounts, research, and theory to reveal her thoughts on feminism. In the 1980s, Rich wrote a number of dialogue poems, the best-known of which is her "Twenty-One Love Poems." This series modernizes the Elizabethan sonnet sequences written by men to idealized women by directing the poems to an unnamed female lover. Other poems, penned to women like Willa Cather, Ethel Rosenberg, and the poet's grandmothers, explore further aspects of Rich's identity, including her experience as a Jewish woman.

Rich's work is known for its political radicalism and candid exploration of motherhood, feminism, lesbianism, and Jewish identity. Her role as poet, essayist, and critic has earned her an important place in contemporary feminism.

1.      Adrienne Rich. (2010) American Passages. Retrieved from: http://www.learner.org/amerpass/unit15/authors-8.html

 
 September Women


Antonia Novello

	"Service is the rent you pay for living, and that service is what sets you apart." -Antonia Novello

Surgeon General,  Born 1944 - present (born Aug. 23, 1944, Fajardo, Puerto Rico) physician and public official, the first woman and the first Hispanic to serve as surgeon general of the United States (1990–93). Novello joined the staff of the National Institutes of Health in 1978, rising to the deputy directorship of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in 1986. In 1982 and 1983 she also served as a congressional fellow on the staff of the Labor and Human Resources Committee, advising the legislators on bills dealing with such health issues as organ transplants and cigarette warning labels. In 1990 President George Bush appointed her surgeon general of the United States. As head of the Public Health Service, she promoted an antismoking campaign and improved AIDS education and worked for better health care for minorities, women, and children. She left the post of surgeon general in 1993 and became a representative for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), where she continued to address women's and children's health issues, working to eliminate nutritional problems such as iodine deficiency and to prevent substance abuse and smoking. In 1996 Novello was a visiting professor of health policy and management and the special director for community health policy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, where she guided the development of education and research programs designed to better the health of communities lacking adequate health care resources. In 1999 she became commissioner of the New York State Department of Health, the largest public health agency in the country. Following her appointment, she focused the department's efforts on improving programs such as Child Health Plus and Medicaid and on ensuring affordable health care for the people of New York. She served as state commissioner of health until 2007. Novello received numerous awards throughout her career, including the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal (2002).   1. Antonia C Novello. (2010). Biography.com. Retrieved 02:32, Sep 10 2010 from http://www.biography.com/articles/Antonia-C-Novello-9425582