PULLMAN, Wash.–Washington State University Press has released “Northwest Women: An Annotated Bibliography of Sources on the History of Oregon and Washington Women, 1787-1970,” the first such bibliography on the history of Pacific Northwest women.
Topping any list of notable Northwest women one is certain to find familiar names like Sacajawea, Narcissa Whitman, and Bertha Knight Landes. In addition to these, there are countless other women, both recognized and anonymous, who played important roles in the history and development of the region.
Karen J. Blair, professor of history at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, has spent the past eight years collecting and annotating more than 700 studies that examine the contributions of Washington and Oregon women. In Northwest Women, Blair concisely describes each book and article, bringing to light generations of scholarship and writing about homesteaders, missionaries, suffragists, educators, reformers, political leaders, cannery workers, painters, writers and a host of others.
The book includes celebrated individuals like Anna Louise Strong, Mary Carr Moore, May Arkwright Hutton, Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins and Abigail Scott Duniway, as well as “…the invisible groups of women, who operated the canneries, who cooked at lumber camps and on salmon trollers, who ran the schools and organized the charities,” writes Blair in her preface. Included, too, are Native American basket makers, daughters of early territorial governors, founders of hospitals and Japanese-American women who were interned during World War II.
“Northwest Women” will be of particular use to researchers in history and women’s studies, teachers of Northwest history, and academic, public and secondary school libraries.
Karen J. Blair is the author of “The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined” and “The Torchbearers: Women and Their Amateur Arts Associations in America, 1890-1920.” She is the editor of the acclaimed Women in Pacific Northwest History: An Anthology.
Northwest Women is a 128-page, large format paperback, with an index and illustrations, available at bookstores or direct from WSU Press for $32.95. For information, contact the Press at 800/354-7360.
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Editor’s Note: Karen Blair can be reached in Ellensburg, Washington, at
509/ 963-1655. For information about this book, or to receive a review copy, call the WSU Press at 509/ 335-3518.
