As a Jewish American writer and activist, Emma Lazarus has been widely recognized for her work. However, she is most famous for her poem, “The New Colossus,” that is engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Her words; “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” are almost as well-known as the Statue itself.
Mercy Otis Warren was a published poet, political playwright and satirist during the age of the American Revolution—a time when women were encouraged and expected to keep silent on political matters. Warren not only engaged with the leading figures of the day—such as John, Abigail, and Samuel Adams—but she became an outspoken commentator and historian, as well as the leading female intellectual of the Revolution and early republic.
Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer lived her entire life in Virginia, where she tended her garden, worked as a librarian and teacher, hosted luminaries of Black intellectual and cultural life, and fought for equal rights for African Americans.
Poet, dancer, singer, activist, and scholar, Maya Angelou is a world-famous author. She is best known for her unique and pioneering autobiographical writing style.
Pauli Murray was breaking barriers from a young age. Held back by what Murray dubbed “Jane Crow,” s/he* was a staunch advocate for the rights of women and people of color and fought tirelessly for civil rights. As a poet, writer, activist, organizer, legal theorist, and priest, Murray was directly involved in, and helped articulate, the intellectual foundations of two of the most important social justice movements of the twentieth century.
As a Chilean author and educator, Gabriela Mistral became the first Latin American author to receive the Nobel Prize in literature. She boldly advocated for the rights of women, children, the poor, and many other disadvantaged groups in her community.
Poet and author Audre Lorde used her writing to shine light on her experience of the world as a Black lesbian woman and later, as a mother and person suffering from cancer. A prominent member of the women’s and LGBTQ rights movements, her writings called attention to the multifaceted nature of identity and the ways in which people from different walks of life could grow stronger together.
Despite spending much of her life enslaved, Phillis Wheatley was the first African American and second woman (after Anne Bradstreet) to publish a book of poems.
Tumadir bint Amru al-Harith bint al-Sharid, better known as al-Khansāʾ, was one of the most influential poets of Arabia’s pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods in the 7th century. Born into a powerful family near Mecca and Medina, much of her work was inspired by her brothers Ṣakhr and Muʿāwiyah, who died in tribal battles. At the time, the role of female poets was to write elegies for the dead and perform them for the tribe in public oral competitions. Al-Khansāʾ won acclaim in these competitions with her work, and is widely considered as the finest author of Arabic elegies and one of the greatest and best known female Arab poets of all time. In 629, she went to Medina with a group from her clan and, after meeting the Prophet Muhammad, embraced the new religion of Islam. Some sources say she was the favourite poet of Muhammad, who wept when he heard her elegies for her brothers.
Alba Roballo was a prominent Afro-Uruguayan lawyer, poet and politician, who was Uruguay’s first woman Cabinet member, first woman Culture Minister, and first woman elected to the (then collective) Municipal Council of Montevideo, Uruguay.