Women from all walks of life helped make California what it is today. There were the Sisters of Mercy who waded into the smallpox infested hospitals to care for the needy of all races and financial means.Donaldina Cameron rescued more than 3,000 Asian slave girls who had been sold into prostitution, often by their parents.We've included Lucille Ball, Clara Bow and Isadora Duncan in our list of entertainment celebrities.

Americans have long cherished romantic images of the frontier and its colorful cast of characters, where the cowboys are always rugged and the ladies always fragile. But in this book, Peter Boag opens an extraordinary window onto the real Old West. Delving into countless primary sources and surveying sexological and literary sources, Boag paints a vivid picture of a West where cross-dressing—for both men and women—was pervasive, and where easterners as well as Mexicans and even Indians could redefine their gender and sexual identities. Boag asks, why has this history been forgotten and erased? Citing a cultural moment at the turn of the twentieth century—when the frontier ended, the United States entered the modern era, and homosexuality was created as a category—Boag shows how the American people, and thus the American nation, were bequeathed an unambiguous heterosexual identity.

When in the early 1870s historian Hubert Howe Bancroft sent interviewers out to gather oral histories from the pre-statehood gentry of California, he didn’t count on one thing: the women. When the men weren’t available, the interviewers collected the stories of the women of the household—sometimes almost as an afterthought. These interviews were eventually archived at the University of California, though many were all but forgotten. Testimonios presents thirteen women’s firsthand accounts from the days when California was part of Spain and Mexico. Having lived through the gold rush and seen their country change so drastically, these women understood the need to tell the full story of the people and the places that were their California.

"Remarkable...mesmerizing...compelling.... An entire world unfolds in Tolstoyan tide of event and detail....Give yourself over to the world Ms. Tan creates for you." —The New York Times Book Review Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years. Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past—including the terrible truth even Helen does not know. And so begins Winnie's story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s, and other places in China during World War II, and traces the happy and desperate events that led to Winnie's coming to America in 1949. The Kitchen God's Wife is "a beautiful book" (Los Angeles Times) from the bestselling author of novels like The Joy Luck Club and The Backyard Bird Chronicles, and the memoir, Where the Past Begins.

In a series of biographical profiles, this volume celebrates the lives and achievements of women who made history in the Golden State. Throughout California’s history, remarkable women have been at the core of change and innovation. In this fascinating volume, Gloria Harris and Hannah Cohen relate the stories of forty women whose struggles and achievements have paved the way for generations. Coming from all walks of life and entering a variety of fields—from activism and conservation to science, medicine, entertainment, and more—these women overcame prejudice, skepticism and injustice to prove that women can do anything. Visionary architect Julia Morgan designed Hearst Castle; Dolores Huerta co-founded United Farm Workers; Donaldina Cameron, the angry angel of Chinatown, rescued brothel workers; and silent film actress Mary Pickford helped form United Artists Pictures. From fearless pioneers to determined reformers, Harris and Cohen chronicle the triumphs and disappointments of diverse women who dared to take risks and break down barriers.

"The phrase ’seeing the elephant’ symbolized for ’49 gold rushers the exotic, the mythical, the once-in-a-lifetime adventure, unequaled anywhere else but in the journey to the promised land of fortune: California. Most western myths . . . generally depict an exclusively male gold rush. Levy’s book debunks that myth. Here a variety of women travel, work, and write their way across the pages of western migrant history."-Choice "One of the best and most comprehensive accounts of gold rush life to date"ˆ–San Francisco Chronicle

Studies of the Spanish conquest in the Americas traditionally have explained European-Indian encounters in terms of such factors as geography, timing, and the charisma of individual conquistadores. Yet by reconsidering this history from the perspective of gender roles and relations, we see that gender ideology was a key ingredient in the glue that held the conquest together and in turn shaped indigenous behavior toward the conquerors. This book tells the hidden story of women during the missionization of California. It shows what it was like for women to live and work on that frontierÑand how race, religion, age, and ethnicity shaped female experiences. It explores the suppression of women's experiences and cultural resistance to domination, and reveals the many codes of silence regarding the use of force at the missions, the treatment of women, indigenous ceremonies, sexuality, and dreams. Virginia Bouvier has combed a vast array of sourcesÑ including mission records, journals of explorers and missionaries, novels of chivalry, and oral historiesÑ and has discovered that female participation in the colonization of California was greater and earlier than most historians have recognized. Viewing the conquest through the prism of gender, Bouvier gives new meaning to the settling of new lands and attempts to convert indigenous peoples. By analyzing the participation of womenÑ both Hispanic and IndianÑ in the maintenance of or resistance to the mission system, Bouvier restores them to the narrative of the conquest, colonization, and evangelization of California. And by bringing these voices into the chorus of history, she creates new harmonies and dissonances that alter and enhance our understanding of both the experience and meaning of conquest.