Mary E. Pearson is the  author of The Kiss of Deception and many other award-winning books for young adults. You can learn more about Mary and her books here.

March is National Women’s History Month and this year’s theme is about weaving women’s stories into the “essential fabric of our nation’s history.” There are so many strong, amazing women who helped build this country and often they’ve been left out of the historical record.

  

The National History Women’s Project aims to correct that and says, “Accounts of the lives of individual women are critically important because they reveal exceptionally strong role models who share a more expansive vision of what a woman can do. The stories of women’s lives, and the choices they made, encourage girls and young women to think larger and bolder, and give boys and men a fuller understanding of the female experience.”

I think this applies to fiction too. I love reading about strong women. Why shouldn’t I? They are a part of our lives. They are everywhere. Our mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, and colleagues. They inspire us, hold us up, and help to move us forward in our own dreams. They help us to see all that we are and all that we can be, in spite of our flaws, our weaknesses, and fears. The stories of strong women, both in history and in fiction, need to be heard! And heard by both our daughters and our sons.

I’ve had some incredible strong women role models, one of whom was my grandmother. She didn’t take crap from anyone. Maybe it stemmed from an oppressive childhood. She grew up in in a small town in Arkansas, and though she fell in love with one boy, her father forced her to marry another—a man actually—much older than she was. He was “wealthy.” He owned the only car in town which was a big deal back then—at least to her father.  It was a loveless marriage and two children later she walked out, defying both her father and her husband. Being a single mother during the Depression wasn’t easy, but somehow she kept her children fed, including the “love child” that came along later. Yes, scandalous for her time, but she made no apologies. She moved forward.

That’s what I’ve seen with the strong women in my life. They may get knocked down; they might make mistakes along the way, but that doesn’t stop them. They move forward drawing on their own unique strengths and the ones they’ve gained on their journey—and there are so many ways to be strong. One way of course, is through plain physical power.  I know a lot of women with incredible physical endurance—and ones who can pack a wallop! But there are many shades of strength, including bravery, compassion, intelligence, perseverance, vision, curiosity, cleverness, ambition, resolve, and so many more.  

I love seeing the whole spectrum in so many amazing heroines. In celebration of Women’s History Month, I’d like to share a few of my favorites from recent reads:

Sybella

Oh Sybella, how I ached for you.  From the time she was introduced in the first book of the series, I was pricked with curiosity about the depth of her story.  When at last it unfolded in Dark Triumph, I was undone. Yes, it is a fantasy novel, but Sybella’s story cut me to the quick with its gritty realism. Sybella somehow finds the strength to reach deep and overcome a lifetime of betrayals. She broke my heart and then pieced it back together again with hope. I loved all the female protagonists in the His Fair Assassin series by Robin LaFevers, but Sybella’s strength melted into my core.

Charley

Charley is fun. She is clever. She is strong.  She’s the kind of girl you want for a best friend—whether you’re a guy or a girl. She is resourceful, and has a sense of humor even as she is desperately trying to survive after being thrown into the most dire of circumstances on an island—without food, water, or clothes. Yes, she is naked, which she notes with all the shock and horror that my own seventeen year-old self would have had. Charley, the main protagonist in Lynne Matson’s debut, NIL, has stuck with me and still makes me smile when I think of her. She is a survivor.

Cress

Humorous like Charley, Cress is a different kind of survivor. She’s on an island of another sort, a prisoner in a satellite high above the earth. Locked away from almost all human contact, Cress uses her imagination to survive. She is a dreamer and envisions a different life from the one she has had. Yes, Cress is flawed and naïve—what else could you expect from someone who has had to endure a life of isolation—but she is also skilled at things like hacking computer systems and when she realizes how she has been used, she puts those skills to good use. In her naivety Cress is so different from the other heroines in Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles, but that is what captured my heart too. Her world has only been seen through the lens of a netscreen and from that she pieces together some semblance of a life—until she has the opportunity to grab for another.

Celaena

She’s a bad ass. There is no other way to say it. Dangerous and driven, violence is all Celaena has ever known. She was raised to be an assassin—and she’s damn good at it. But besides setting her adversaries on edge with her knife skills, she can do it with her humor too. That’s my kind of girl. She lets no strength go unmined. My grandmother would love her. So do I. I’ve only read the first book in The Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas, but I can’t wait to see what mayhem Celaena stirs in the rest.

For the sake of space, I’ll have to use shorthand here, but more strong heroines I loved were Kestrel from The Winner’s Curse (clever and calculating!), Wilhelmina from The Orphan Queen (courageous and determined!), Rosie from The Vault of Dreamers (curious, creative, and brave!) and . . . okay, there are a lot of great heroines out there.

Even though all the stories I’ve mentioned are fantasy, I think the fantasy elements help illuminate the very real strengths in all of us. All these incredible heroines had tough choices to make, just as we all do every day, and they meet the challenges of their fate and circumstances through trial and error, calculations and intelligence, missteps and perseverance, vision and triumph—and plenty of badassery. Sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

The NWHP says, “There is a real power in hearing women’s stories” and I couldn’t agree more. The female voice, experience, and perspective is unique, and reading about it enriches all of our lives, girls and women, boys and men alike.

There! Go link arms with one of these women and let them take you on a powerful journey.