Yuan Yuan Tan: Graceful On and Off the Stage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuanyuan_Tan

Yuan Yuan Tan is currently prima ballerina at the San Francisco Ballet and guest principal dancer at the Hong Kong Ballet. She started dancing when she was eleven and had great success in dance competitions around the world. Her accomplishments granted her celebrity status, and she has been celebrated in many high-profile magazines, including Vogue China. She has even been called “the greatest Chinese ballerina of all time.” She has received brand endorsements from numerous influential brands and is considered a fashion icon.

“Inspiration comes when you let go.” —Yuan yuan Tan

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Girls by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Hajra Khan: A Baller On and Off the Field

https://www.footballpakistan.com/2018/04/hajra-khan-the-world-at-her-feet-the-nation/

Born in Sindh, Pakistan, Hajra Khan joined in on the nation’s love of soccer. At a young age, she played with her neighbors and hoped for a chance to play on a real team. At age fourteen, she joined a local team, and her soccer career boomed. At only twenty years of age, she became the captain of the Pakistan women’s national team and is currently the highest scoring player in its history. She is also the first person on the Pakistan national team to be signed by a foreign club. While it appears that soccer is her passion, her true love may lie in using her success as a platform for action. She uses her social media as a springboard to end the unequal wages female Pakistani players are paid compared to men. She is an ambassador for UNICEF and fights for getting her team affiliated with FIFA. She is currently pursuing a degree in international relations and hopes to fund her own nonprofit aiming to end the stigma surrounding mental illnesses in athletes. While a successful and talented athlete, Hajra demonstrates the ability to use that talent for change.

“And we realized that everyone was paid unfairly, treated poorly, and we kind of figured the only way to make this work was to work together for our cause and raise awareness.”

—Hajra Khan

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Girls by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Oprah Winfrey: The Queen of the Talk Show

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oprah_in_2014.jpg

Although most people think of The Oprah Winfrey Show when they think of Oprah, besides ruling the media world as a television and talk show host, her curriculum vitae also includes being an actress, producer, magazine publisher, entrepreneur, CEO, and philanthropist. None of this was handed to her—she was born to a teenage mother on a farm in Mississippi in 1954, and her unmarried parents soon separated and left her there in her grandmother’s care. She was exceptionally bright; her grandmother taught her to read at the tender age of two and a half, and she was skipped through kindergarten and second grade. At age six, Winfrey was sent to live with her mother and three half-siblings in a very rough Milwaukee ghetto. She has said that she was molested as a child starting at age nine, and in her early teens by men her family trusted.

At twelve, she was again uprooted and sent to live with her father, a barber, in Nashville. This, however, was a relatively positive time for the young Winfrey, who started being called on to make speeches at churches and social gatherings. After being paid $500 for a speech on one occasion, she knew she wanted to be “paid to talk.” She was further bounced back and forth between both her parents’ homes, compounding the trauma of the abuse she had suffered. Her mother worked long and variable hours and was not around much of the time.
At fourteen, Winfrey became pregnant with a son; he did not survive early infancy. After some years of acting out, including running away once, she was sent to her father, to stay this time. She credits her father with saving her with his strictness and devotion, his rules, guidance, structure, and books. It was mandatory that she write a book report every week, and she went without dinner unless she learned five new vocabulary words every day.

Things completely turned around for Winfrey. She did well in school and then managed to land a job in radio while still in high school. After winning an oratory contest, she was able to study communication on a scholarship at Tennessee State University, a historically Black college. She was a co-anchor of the local evening news at age nineteen, and before long her emotional verve when ad-libbing took her into the world of Baltimore’s daytime talk shows. After seven years on Baltimore Is Talking, she had better local ratings than those of famed national talk show host Phil Donahue. She took a local Chicago
talk show from third place to first, and was then on her way with the launch of her own production company. In 1985, a year after taking on A.M. Chicago, producer Quincy Jones spotted her on air and decided to cast her in a film he was planning based on Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple. Her acting in this extremely well-received film had a meteoric effect on the popularity of her talk show, which was by now The Oprah Winfrey Show, and the show gained wide syndication. She had taken a local show and changed its focus from traditional
women’s concerns and tabloid fodder to issues including cancer, charity work, substance abuse, self-improvement, geopolitics, literature, and spirituality.

Winfrey launched O: The Oprah Magazine in 2000; it continues to be popular. She has spearheaded other publications as well, from four years of O At Home magazine to coauthoring five books. In 2008, she created a new channel called OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, and put her self-branded talk show to bed. She has earned the sobriquet of “Queen of All Media,” and is counted the richest African American and the most pre-eminent Black philanthropist in American history. She is at present North America’s first and only Black multi-billionaire, and is considered to be one of the most influential women in the world, despite the many setbacks and hardships she endured in early life. She has been awarded honorary doctorates from Duke and Harvard universities, and in 2013, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Black Women by Becca Anderson and MJ Fievre, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley: Dressmaker to the Lincolns

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Keckley

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was a former slave who became a successful seamstress, author, and civil rights activist in Washington, DC. She was first lady Mary Todd Lincoln’s personal dressmaker. Keckley’s father was also her owner, Armistead Burwell. Keckley’s mother was a light-skinned house slave, and Elizabeth learned to sew at an early age from working in the house with her. Keckley was primarily a nursemaid to the Burwell children, and was severely beaten if she failed in her duties. Her mother was permitted to marry another slave at a neighboring house, George Hobbs, who was sold off when Keckley was young. He corresponded with her mother for many years, which was rare at the time because slaves were not allowed to read and write.

In 1855, she bought her freedom and that of her son for $1,200, for which she took out on loan from some of her patrons. After she paid off her debt, she moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where she tried to set up a business teaching young Black women to sew, but was unsuccessful. She then moved to Washington, DC, where she found more success in business and began to take dress orders from prominent White women in the capital, including Varina Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis. She employed twenty seamstresses at her business and was known for fitting garments for her patrons that complimented their figures. She met Mary Todd Lincoln on President Lincoln’s Inauguration Day in 1861, and was hired the next day to become Mrs. Lincoln’s personal dresser.

Keckley became an intimate part of the Lincoln White House, and she was considered to be Mrs. Lincoln’s best friend. She was often called upon to style President Lincoln’s unruly hair. When the Lincoln’s son Willie died, it was Keckley who Mrs. Lincoln called to help console her. She was also called upon to console Mrs. Lincoln after her husband was assassinated. When Mrs. Lincoln went into debt after her husband’s death, she called upon Keckley to help her sell off some of her wardrobe to meet her debts. The result was a disastrous scandal for Mrs. Lincoln, who was seen as gauche for trying to sell off her old clothes. In 1868, Keckley published a memoir, Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House. It did not go over well with the public, who were scandalized that Keckley told of so many of the Lincoln’s private moments. But the memoir was not just an account of her time at the White House, it was also a narrative of her path to freedom, and of the many years of hard work she put into dressing the elite of Washington.

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Black Women by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

STORM REID: TAKING THE WORLD BY STORM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Reid

Storm Reid’s acting career began when she was three. A string of small roles eventually led to her film debut in 2013’s 12 Years a Slave. This performance was followed by an appearance in the superhero movie Sleight, and then her breakout: Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time. She also made numerous appearances on television, including NCIS: Los Angeles and Chicago P.D. She currently plays roles on the HBO series Euphoria and the Netflix series Central Park. In an interview with The Washington Post she said that her main goal was to “represent girls who look like me and let them know they can do anything.”

“I’m gonna take this world by storm. Pun intended.” —Storm Reid

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Girls by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

ADUT AKECH: BEAUTIFUL INSIDE AND OUT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adut_Akech

Modeling superstar Adut Akech was born in South Sudan before eventually moving with her mother and siblings to Australia as refugees at the age of six. She was scouted multiple times at a young age but did not become a model until she was sixteen years old. She has been on the cover of Vogue several times, including the coveted September issue. In 2019, Adut was named “Model of the Year” at the British Fashion Awards.

“Before I’m anything else, I am a refugee, and I’m so proud of that.”

—Adut Akech

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Girls by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

ANNE RICE queen of the damned

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Rice

What would make a good Irish Catholic girl write about vampires, modeling her main bloodsucker, Lestat, on a male version of herself, and in her spare time write some of the steamiest sadomasochistic erotica on the market? It might have started as a reaction to being pegged with the name Howard Allen Frances O’Brien by her loving parents, but then again, this was not all that unusual
for someone growing up in New Orleans. Before she was ever humiliated on the playground, Anne Rice dumped the ‘Howard Allen,’ and after a few years
of rapid name change experimentation, finally settled on just plain Anne. But since then she’s done a fine job of proving there is nothing plain or ordinary about Anne Rice—and there’s nothing ordinary about how rabid her fans
are, either.

Born in 1941, Anne had the good fortune of being brought up in one of the most uniquely interesting cities in the world, haunted by its charm and mystery. In 1956, when she was just a teenager, her mother died of alcohol abuse. After
a brief stay in Texas, where her father had relocated, she met poet Stan Rice, whom she married in 1961. From 1964 through 1988, she lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, alternately writing, working odd jobs, soaking up the West Coast’s version of quirk and old-world charm, and going to school.

In 1972, her daughter Michele (affectionately called “Mouse”) died of leukemia. During the seven years that followed, Anne worked on Interview with the Vampire—a novel featuring child vampire Claudia, a character based on
her deceased daughter. After repeated rejection, the novel was finally published in the mid-1970s to wild acclaim. The mix of horror, blood, sexual tension, and romantic settings proved a potent, wealth-producing combination, and
the prolific Anne has continued to crank out several bestselling series of books dealing with vampires, witches, demons, mummies, and ghosts. Her books have given her the opportunity to revisit her beloved characters as well as her hometown again and again. In addition, under the pen names Anne Rampling and A.N. Roquelaure, she has also dabbled in erotica, penning such works as Exit to Eden (which found its way to the silver screen in 1994 and was well received) and The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty.

Her penchant for having a good time has included a season of book-signings where she wore wedding dresses to all of her appearances, including a special affair in New Orleans where she arrived via coffin in an Old Quarter-style jazz funeral procession. But more often than not these shenanigans have resulted
in the media’s glossing over the deeper, more penetrating and powerful themes found in her work. This distresses her, because as she once pointed out in her fan club newsletter, she uses her “otherworldly characters to delve more deeply into the heart of guilt, love, alienation, bisexuality, loss of grace, [and] terror in a meaningless universe.”

Her fame is extraordinary. She created quite a stir a few years ago when she criticized the casting of Tom Cruise as Lestat in the movie version of Interview with the Vampire (though she later recanted). Recently, she bought the former St. Elizabeth’s Orphanage, a massive old structure that takes up an entire square block in New Orleans, and has brought it back to life in a new incarnation as one part home, one part museum, and one part funhouse.

In 1995, she hosted the annual coven party started by her legion of fans from the Vampire Lestat Fan Club at her “orphanage.” With a little luck, inspired by our fascination with the unknown and propelled by a multitude of fans worldwide, Anne Rice will continue to turn out her luminous, demon-filled view of the world for years to come.

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women Writers by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

DANIELLE STEEL solid gold Steel

https://www.glamour.com/story/danielle-steel-books-interview

America’s sweetheart Danielle Steel is one of the hardest working women in the book business. She has a unique approach, differing from other prolific writers who claim to focus on one project at a time; she works on up to five books at
a time, juggling storylines, writing one while editing others. Add her movie scripts and adaptations from her fiction and you have a virtuoso at work, and a very successful one. Make no mistake, however; her books are not “cranked out”; her research process alone usually takes at least three years. Once she has fully studied her subjects in preparation for diving into a book, she can spend up to eighteen to twenty hours nonstop at her 1946 Olympia typewriter.

Steel hails from New York and was sent to France for her education. Upon graduation, she worked in the public relations and advertising industries. She left these to craft a career as a writer and clearly found the work for which she was best suited. She also married and raised nine children. Never considered particularly feminist, Steel creates female protagonists in her romance novels who are powerful women, often driven career women, who juggle work, life, and love. Palomino, published in 1981, is centered around a woman rancher who founds a center for handicapped children; Kaleidoscope is the story of an orphan girl who survives a series of foster homes and recovers from rape to track down her sisters and reunite her family.

The statistics about Danielle Steel’s career are staggering: 650 million copies of books in print, over fifty New York Times bestselling novels, and a series of Max and Martha illustrated books for children to help them deal with difficult issues such as death, new babies, divorce, moving, new schools, and other real-life problems. She has written a volume of love poems, and her 1998 book about the death of her son Nicholas Traina, His Bright Light, shot to the top
of the New York Times bestselling nonfiction list upon its release. At this point, twenty-eight of her books have been adapted for films, and one, Jewels, garnered two Golden Globe nominations. She is listed in The Guinness Book of World Records for the amazing run of one of her titles on the Times bestseller list for 381 weeks straight. Since that accomplishment, another Steel title has beaten her own record with 390 consecutive weeks.

Danielle Steel doesn’t rest on either her many laurels or her beauty, wealth, fame, and unstoppable talent. She also works diligently on behalf of various charities—she serves as the National Chairperson for the American Library Association, on the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse, and as spokesperson for the American Humane Association.

Not content with a posh Parisian pied-á-terre, a view of the Golden Gate Bridge, and her undisputed status as the bestselling living author, Danielle Steel realizes her readers are her most important resource and has made herself accessible to them via email through her publisher, Random House. While she is often compared to the fictional heroines of her own invention, her life is undoubtedly much quieter. But if she does have anything in common with them, it is her strength of will and her inimitable style. There is only one Danielle Steel.

I believe in dreams, not just the kind we have at night. I think that if we hang onto them, they come true.

Danielle Steel

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women Writers by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

SUE GRAFTON W is for writer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Grafton

What is mystery writer Sue Grafton going to do when she finishes with the alphabet? Born in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 24, 1940, she lived there through her time as a student at the local university, where she studied literature. Before she found her fortune in writing detective fiction, she worked as a cashier, an admissions clerk, and a medical secretary. While struggling to support herself and three children, Grafton wrote seven novels, mostly unpublished, before she came up with her winning formula in 1982 with A
Is for Alibi. Her twenty-five alphabetical novels (she’s finished Y as of this writing) are now published in twenty-eight countries and twenty-six languages, creating reader bases in such places as Bulgaria, Estonia, and India. She has reframed the alphabet for devotees of her spunky female detective character, Kinsey Millhone, with B is for Burglar, C is for Corpse, D is for Deadbeat, E is for Evidence, and so on. Fans worry about “life after Z.”

So there I was barreling down the highway in search of employment and not at all fussy about what kind I’d take.

Sue Grafton

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women Writers by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

ELLEN OCHOA: FIRST HISPANIC WOMAN IN SPACE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Ochoa

Ellen Ochoa is a woman whose intelligence and hard work literally took her into the stratosphere – and beyond. Born in 1958, she grew up in Southern California and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in physics from San Diego State in 1980. She earned a master of science degree at Stanford only a year later and went on to earn a Ph.D in electrical engineering in 1985. She continued her research career at Sandia National Laboratories and the NASA Ames Research Center, where she was the lead scientist of a research group working on optical systems to process information in ways that would enable automated space exploration. Ochoa holds a patent on an optical system that detects defects in a repeating pattern. She is also a co-inventor on three other patents, for an optical object recognition method, an optical inspection system, and for a way to remove noise in images. She supervised 35 scientists and engineers working on R & D for computational systems for aerospace missions as Chief of the Intelligent Systems Technology Branch at Ames.

In 1990, NASA selected Ochoa to become an astronaut, and in mid-1991 she completed her training. She became the first Hispanic woman ever to go into space in 1993 when she was on the crew for a nine-day shuttle mission studying the ozone layer on the shuttle Discovery. She has since served on three further space flights and has logged almost a thousand hours in space. Ochoa became the Deputy Director of the Johnson Space Center in 2007 and is involved in management and direction of the Astronaut Office and Aircraft Operations. She is retired from spacecraft operations, but still breaking new ground: in 2013, she became the second female and first Hispanic director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Ochoa has received awards including NASA’s Exceptional Service Award in 1997, Outstanding Leadership Medal in 1995, and several Space Flight Medals. And she has had three elementary and middle schools named after her. You can’t keep a good woman earthbound!

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.