We cannot shape the world according to the delights society decrees appropriate for us; we must be unconventional in our joys and find them wherever we can.

From Islands of Mercy by Rose Tremain

Here are six new books by and about unconventional woman that you may not have seen on other reading lists for Women’s History Month (or any other time of year, of course).

Ann Lowe: American Couturier by Elizabeth Way

Even if you’ve never heard of Ann Lowe you’re likely to be at least somewhat familiar with her most famous design: Jackie Kennedy’s wedding dress. Lowe created the dress in 1953 for her marriage to John F. Kennedy and, although it didn’t make her a national household name due to racism, she already had a devoted clientele of debutantes and society women who wore her gorgeous creations. Judith Thurman wrote a fantastic article about Lowe for The New Yorker in 2021 that helped jump start the rediscovery of Lowe’s work in the 21st century. Ann Lowe: American Couturier accompanies an exhibition of the same name that was held at the Winterthur Museum last year, but it’s so much more than a catalog. You’ll get just as lost in the beautiful color photos of Lowe’s dresses as you will in the “accompany[ing] essays that explore the trials and achievements of Lowe’s life [and] contextualize her work within fashion history.”

In the Form of a Question: The Joys and Rewards of a Curious Life by Amy Schneider

It was absolutely thrilling to watch Amy Schneider compete on Jeopardy! during her record-setting 40-game winning streak that began on November 21, 2021. Beyond her obvious skill at the game, her delightful presence also endeared her to fans of the show. With In the Form of a Question: The Joys and Rewards of a Curious Life, Amy expands on the game show’s familiar format to create of the most fun and unique memoirs that you’ll ever have the joy of reading. Yes, she writes about growing up in Ohio and what life is like as a transgender woman, but there are also chapters on what she thinks is the greatest animated television show of all time, reading tarot cards, and of course her time on Jeopardy!. Life is a journey, and Amy’s memoir will remind you that it’s never a straight line through all the weird and wonderful stuff along the way.

What You Don’t Know Will Make a Whole New World: A Memoir by Dorothy Lazard

Dorothy Lazard was a librarian for 40 years in California, and she joined the staff of the Oakland Public Library in 2000. In 2009 she became the head librarian of the Oakland History Center until her retirement in 2021. Lazard is beloved and revered in her community for encouraging people to explore local history and tell their stories. Now, with What You Don’t Know Will Make a Whole New World, it’s her turn. What I love about Lazard’s book is her singular focus on her childhood during the 1970s and what she describes as “my recovery mission to retrieve a time in my life that marked me more deeply than any other.”

Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain

Rose Tremain’s charming novel Absolutely & Forever is narrated by its singular main character, a young woman named Marianne Clifford. Marianne is wise beyond her years but not immune to the charms of an older boy she meets at a holiday party while at home from boarding school. What follows is a brilliantly told coming of age story. It’s a tale as old as time, perhaps, but one with a fresh and beguiling voice.

Cloistered: My Years as a Nun by Catherine Coldstream

Perhaps the most well-known Carmelite nuns are the Martyrs of Compiègne who were featured in Frances Poulenc’s opera, Dialogues des Carmélites. All 16 members of the order were executed by guillotine in 1794 for refusing to renounce their religious vocation during the Rein of Terror of the French Revolution. The Carmelite Order is cloistered which means its members separate themselves from the outside world to focus primarily on a life of prayer. Catherine Coldstream joined Akenside Priory outside London in 1989 following the death of her father. In Cloistered: My Years as a Nun, she explores what brought her to the faith and what ultimately led her to escape from it. First person accounts such as Coldstream’s are rare, and she writes with great bravery about the harrowing sparsity of her years in the monastery.

Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation by Emily Van Duyne

Emily Van Duyne’s book isn’t out until July, but it’s already on my to read list. On the intro page to her Substack newsletter of the same name, Van Duyne states: “Everything I write about Plath, I write in opposition to the way I was taught to read her, hear her, and speak of her, which is to say, the way I was taught to read, her, and speak of all women writers, if not of all women.” Indeed, writing about Sylvia Plath is often just as complicated as it is to read her own work. Admitting that you’re a devoted “Plathian,” as Van Duyne calls herself and other fans, is to enter into a well trodden stereotype about complicated, sad women. Loving Sylvia Plath is set to “radically reimagine the last years of Plath’s life [and] confront her suicide and the construction of her legacy.” As Bette Davis famously said in All About Eve, fasten your seatbelts…