South American Women in History
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is a magnificent leader and an amazing woman. She is the current President of Liberia and Africa's first elected female head of state. From her service as a Liberian Cabinet Minister in the 1970s, senior United Nations administrator in the 1990s and now Liberia's President, Johnson-Sirleaf, 67, has never stopped working for democracy for her country.
When she opposed the military rule of Samuel Doe, she was imprisoned before eventually fleeing Liberia. Her years in exile afforded her valuable international experience through her work at the World Bank and the U.N. As the first woman ever elected President in Africa, Johnson-Sirleaf is an example of what can happen when girls are educated. Educated women are better positioned to contribute to their economies and their countries. When women are equipped with knowledge, they can be better mothers. Now that Liberia's 14-year civil war has ended, we hope women will follow Johnson-Sirleaf's example and return to their home country and be a part of Liberia's economic future.
Johnson-Sirleaf's courage and commitment to her country are an inspiration to all the women around the world.
American writer noted for her examination of black experience (particularly black female experience) within the black community. She became the first African American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (1993).
Morrison's first book, The Bluest Eye (1970), is a novel of initiation concerning a victimized adolescent black girl who is obsessed by white standards of beauty and longs to have blue eyes. In 1973 a second novel, Sula, was published; it examines (among other issues) the dynamics of friendship and the expectations for conformity within the community. Song of Solomon (1977) is told by a male narrator in search of his identity; its publication brought Morrison to national attention. Tar Baby (1981), set on a Caribbean island, explores conflicts of race, class, and sex. The critically acclaimed Beloved (1987), which won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is based on the true story of a runaway slave who, at the point of recapture, kills her infant daughter in order to spare her a life of slavery. Jazz (1992) is a story of violence and passion set in New York City's Harlem during the 1920s. A work of criticism, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, also was published in 1992. Her novel Paradise (1998) is a richly detailed portrait of a black utopian community in Oklahoma. Her later novel, Love (2003), is an intricate family story that reveals the myriad facets of love and its ostensible opposite.
The central theme of Morrison's novels is the black American experience; in an unjust society her characters struggle to find themselves and their cultural identity. Her use of fantasy, her sinuous poetic style, and her rich interweaving of the mythic gave her stories great strength and texture.
This remarkable woman made world history in 1992 when, as a NASA Science Mission Specialist, she became the first black woman to go into space. In addition to her career as an astronaut and scientist, Mae Jennison speaks six languages, is a professor at Dartmouth College in the USA and spent several years with the US Peace Corps working as a doctor in Cambodia, Cuba and Western Africa.
Although Mae Jemison may always be known as the first African-American woman to fly in space, that realm has been but one of many in which she has shone. Jemison has always pursued multiple interests, ranging from dance and anthropology to engineering and astronomy. At Stanford University she earned bachelor's degrees in both chemical engineering and African-American studies; later as a young M.D. She administered health programs in West Africa for the Peace Corps. She entered NASA's astronaut program in June 1987, and as a science-mission specialist on Endeavour in September 1992 she conducted experiments on uses of biofeedback in countering motion sickness, effects of space on human calcium levels, and effects of weightlessness on the development of other organisms. Since 1993 she has headed her own technology development firm.
