Doris Lessing, the Nobel Prize-winning British novelist, playwright and poet, was born on this day in 1919. A prolific author, Lessing wrote on a wide range of issues but is best known for her loosely autobiographical 1962 novel “The Golden Notebook” which tackled the inner lives of women who broke out of the social expectation of marriage and home to pursue careers. Lessing received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007, becoming the eleventh woman and the oldest person to be awarded the prize.
Considered daring for its time, her writing often addressed controversial topics such as European colonialism in Africa, racial division, and sexual discrimination, and covered genres from autobiography to poetry to science fiction and dystopian writing. “The Golden Notebook” is structured as a series of multiple “notebooks” by an author protagonist struggling with writer’s block. It touches on women’s issues that had rarely been discussed prior to its publication, including menstruation, frigidity, and sexual freedom. Time Magazine ranked it as one of the hundred best English-language novels in modern times.
Lessing grew up in the central Africa, where she left her Roman Catholic high school before completing her diploma -- her motto as a child, she said, was “I will not.” Although the outspoken Lessing did not consider herself a feminist, the Nobel announcement of her win called her “the epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny.” During the Nobel presentation speech, she was also described as having “personified the woman’s role in the 20th century." Lessing passed away in 2013 at the age of 94.
To learn more about Lessing's most famous novel "The Golden Notebook," visit https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9780060931407 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/3rYD4s5 (Amazon)
If you'd like to encourage your kids' interest in creative writing, there are several excellent guides for young writers, including "Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly" for ages 8 to 12 (https://www.amightygirl.com/writing-magic) and "Spilling Ink: A Young Writer’s Handbook" for ages 9 to 14 (https://www.amightygirl.com/spilling-ink)
To inspire children and teens with the true stories of more women writers and poets, visit our "Writer & Poet Biography" section at http://amgrl.co/1mNYGQl
For more books for children and teens about trailblazing female role models who challenged the social conventions of their times, visit our "Role Model Biography" section at https://www.amightygirl.com/.../history-biography/biography
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