Remembering Flannery, Gloria, & Aretha: In Observance of Woman’s History Month

Flannery O’Connor, Gloria Steinem, and Aretha Franklin were distinctly different, but all three are definitely worth remembering in Women’s History Month (March) as they embodied this year’s theme, “Women Providing Healing, Promoting Hope.”

These three outstanding women are especially worth remembering today as all three were born on March 25: Flannery in 1925, Gloria in 1934, and Aretha in 1942.

Remembering Flannery O’Connor

Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in Georgia and had a short, difficult, and productive life before dying at the early age of 39 in 1964.

In 1949 while living in New York City and making her mark as a promising young writer, she was diagnosed with lupus. Consequently, she moved back to her mother’s home in Milledgeville, Georgia.

Even though she continued to write, gradually she was able to work only two hours and then only one hour a day. Yet, she completed two novels and 32 short stories. Wise Blood, her first novel was published in 1952, and “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” her best-known short story, the following year.

O’Connor was a woman of strong religious faith, and she is widely considered the best Catholic woman author of the 20^th century. God’s grace was an underlying theme of her writing.

One of O’Connor’s well-known statements is, “People without hope not only don’t write novels but what is more to the point, they don’t read them.”

Remembering Gloria Steinem

Despite a humble Ohio childhood, Gloria Steinem graduated magna cum laude from prestigious Smith College in 1956 and earned the Chester Bowles Fellowship, which enabled her to spend two life-changing years in India.

Steinem’s essay about her hopes for the future of women was published in the Aug. 31, 1970, issue of Time magazine. Here is the link to the March 5, 2020, issue of Time that reprints the original essay with Steinem’s comments 50 years later.

Indeed, for more than 50 years Steinem has pursued healing the of gender, ethnic, and other factors that have separated people, favoring some (men, Whites, etc.) to the detriment of others (women, Blacks, etc.). The world is better off because of her ground-breaking and ongoing lifework.

Steinem’s contributions were recognized when she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993 and awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama ten years later.

Her book The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off! was published by Random House in 2019 (when she was 85!). Singer and actress Janelle Monáe dubbed it a “fearless book full of passion, resolute perspective, and unbiased hope for the future.”**

Remembering Aretha Franklin

Though born in Memphis, after age five Aretha grew up in Detroit where her father was pastor of the influential New Bethel Baptist Church from 1946 to 1979.

Respect, a 2021 “biographical musical drama film,” features “Ree” (Aretha) from 1952 to 1972. “Respect” was the song recorded in February 1967 that became her first #1 hit song. And, indeed, much of her early life was seeking respect as an African American and as a woman.

But she was not seeking respect for just herself, “Respect” became a demand for gender and racial equality and has been both a civil rights and a feminist anthem. About a year ago Rolling Stone selected the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time,”—and “Respect” was #1 on that list.

Franklin’s life illustrates this year’s Women’s History Month theme. In August 2018, the month she died, The Guardian posted an article titled Aretha Franklin: a life of heartbreak, heroism and hope.

The climax of the movie Respect shows her healing in 1972 as she powerfully sang “Amazing Grace” as it was being recorded. It became the highest-selling album of her career with over two million copies sold in the U.S.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee three days this week, is poised to become the first Black woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. That possibility is due in part to the ground-breaking work of Gloria and Aretha.

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** The 2020 film The Glorias, based on Steinem’s autobiographical book, My Life on the Road (2015), “weaves a compelling, nontraditional tapestry of one of the most inspirational and legendary figures in modern history.” It is well worth seeing and is available free for those who have Amazon Prime and available for $6-7 on other streaming services.

~&~ Katharine Hayhoe, a Canadian woman who is a climate scientist and an evangelical Christian, has authored a highly acclaimed book, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World (2021), which I mention here because the subtitle echoes the theme of this year’s Women’s History Month.