In 2001 Joan was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). She gained a history degree the same year. Joan supports many charities, especially ones that help young people.
Anne Frank
Writer
(1929–45)
Born into a Jewish family, Anne Frank spent the first years of her childhood with her parents and older sister Margot in the German city of Frankfurt. When dictator Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Jewish people were suddenly discriminated against. The Frank family moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands to avoid persecution.
The family soon settled. Anne’s father Otto started his own business, the girls went to a local school, and Anne’s mother Edith took care of the house. As war loomed, the Franks tried to emigrate but they were too late. Germany invaded Poland and World War II began.
In 1940 German troops marched into the Netherlands. Once more the Frank family faced anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish) laws. Margot and Anne had to attend schools for Jewish children and their father had to give up his business. Otto tried again to move his family to the United States, but it was just not possible.
In 1942 Otto built a hideout behind a bookcase at the back of his shop. The family planned to go into hiding in mid July, but they brought the date forward after receiving a letter for Margot from the German government. It told her she must return at once to Germany and report to a work camp. Later that year four more Jewish people joined them in their secret hiding place.
Only six trusted friends knew where the family was. They had all worked for Anne’s father. They kept the Franks safe, brought them food, clothing, and books, and were their only contact with the outside world.
Anne kept a diary that documented her experiences. She wrote about everyday life in hiding, composed short stories, and collected quotes that she liked.
“I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are really good at heart.”
Life continued in this way until 1944 when someone informed the authorities. The Gestapo (Nazi secret police) raided the building, found the hideout, and arrested everyone. Anne and Margot were transported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; their parents were separated and sent to Auschwitz.
Otto was the only member of the family who survived the war. When he returned to Amsterdam his friend Miep Giess gave him Anne’s diary, which she had found after the raid and kept safe. Otto was deeply moved by his daughter’s writing and decided to publish it.
Since that time Anne Frank’s diary has been translated into more than 70 languages and sold more than 30 million copies. It is one of the most powerful and moving pieces of wartime literature ever written.
Kiri Te Kanawa
Opera Singer
(b.1944)
New Zealander Kiri Te Kanawa, who is part-Maori, was taught to sing at high school. She shot to fame in 1971 with a part in The Marriage of Figaro at the Royal Opera House in London, UK. One of Kiri’s proudest moments during a long and successful career was being heard by more than 600 million people worldwide when she sang at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1982.
Kiri retired from singing in 2017 to focus on the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation. She set up this organization in 2004 to support and teach talented young singers from New Zealand.
Angelina Jolie
Actor and Activist
(b.1975)
Angelina Jolie Voight was born in Los Angeles, USA. She made her screen debut at age seven in a movie starring her father, actor Jon Voight, but her breakthrough role was in Hackers (1995). Angelina won her first Golden Globe in 1998 and picked up an Oscar in 2000.
Angelina is a humanitarian activist as well as a successful actor. When she was a UN Goodwill Ambassador she trained as a pilot so she could deliver aid to refugee camps. In 2012 Angelina was given diplomatic powers when she became a UN Special Envoy. She is also involved in community development, promoting human rights, and conserving habitats.
Nadežda Petrović
Painter
(1873–1915)
Born in Čačak, Serbia, Nadežda Petrović showed promise as a painter when she was still a teenager. She trained as an art teacher and then studied in Munich, Germany, where she met up-and-coming artists including Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. Her first solo exhibition took place in Belgrade in 1900. Over the next decade or so, Nadežda made a name for herself for her impressionist and wild style.
When the Balkan Wars (1912–13) broke out Nadežda volunteered as a nurse with the Red Cross and earned a Medal for Bravery. She had to stop in 1913 after catching typhus and cholera. Nadežda also served as a nurse with the Serbian army in World War I until she died of typhus in 1915.
Melba Liston
Musician
(1926–99)
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, Melba Liston came from a musical family. She started to teach herself the trombone when she was seven years old and joined her school band. Within a year she was performing a solo on the local radio. When Melba was 10 the family moved to Los Angeles, and she began to have private trombone lessons.
Melba began her career as a professional trombonist when she was 16. She toured with successful big band masters such as Dizzy Gillespie and earned respect in the male-dominated world of jazz. In later life Melba was a composer, arranger, and producer for soul-music artists including Marvin Gaye and The Supremes.
Miriam Makeba
Singer and Activist
(1932–2008)
When Zenzile Miriam Makeba was born, no one could have believed that she would grow up to be one of the first African singers to find international fame. Her home was a poor black township on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa, and her parents were from different ethnic backgrounds—her father was Xhosa and her mother was Swazi.
When Miriam was only six years old, her father died suddenly. She had to take on cleaning and babysitting jobs to help to make money for the family. Miriam had already discovered her musical gift and was singing in the choir at school and church. She grew up believing that music would lift her out of poverty one day.
In 1948 the South African government introduced apartheid, a system to keep white and black people separate. Good homes and jobs were not on offer for black people like Miriam. They could not even share public spaces with white people.
Miriam became a professional singer in the 1950s. She toured southern Africa with a group called the Manhattan Brothers and also formed her own all-female group called the Skylarks.
In 1958 Miriam had a role in an anti-apartheid film called Come Back, Africa. It wasn’t a big part, but she sang in it—and audiences loved her voice.
Miriam flew to New York City, USA, and found jobs singing in jazz bars. A calypso singer called Harry Belafonte became her mentor and encouraged her to make her first recordings.
“Girls are the future mothers of our society, and it is important that we focus on their well-being.”
In 1960 the South African police shot at black protestors in a township called Sharpeville. They killed 69 people and injured 220. Miriam’s mother died in the massacre. Miriam tried to return to home for her mother’s funeral, but she discovered that she had been banned. It was the start of 31 years in exile.
It was an extraordinary time to be black and living in New York City. The African-American civil rights movement was at its peak. Miriam became involved, but above all she spoke out against apartheid in her home country. At the same time, her musical career was taking off.
In 1990 Miriam returned to South Africa. Apartheid was now outlawed and the anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela had been released after 27 years in prison.
Known as “Mama Africa,” Miriam became a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN in 1999 and was awarded the Otto Hahn Peace Medal in Gold in 2001. She died in Italy during her farewell musical tour.
Björk
Musician, Singer, and Actor
(b.1965
)
Known only by her first name, Björk Guðmundsdóttir was born in Reykjavik, Iceland. Her musical career started early—she recorded her first solo album at 11 years old and spent her teens in various bands. From 1986 to 1992 Björk was in a group called the Sugarcubes, which found fame in the UK and the United States.
Björk launched her solo career in 1993. With a singing style unlike anyone else’s, Björk is not afraid to experiment and the results can be soaringly beautiful. Björk also has a strong interest in the visual arts and her stage shows are extraordinary spectacles. She won the Best Actress Award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival.
“If you want to make something happen that hasn’t happened before, you’ve got to allow yourself to make a lot of mistakes.”
In 2010 Björk released an album called Biophilia. It featured a new instrument called the Sharpsicord (an automatic accoustic harp), but there was something even more groundbreaking about it. Björk had collaborated with scientists, teachers, app developers, and even an Icelandic choir to create an interactive version. The Biophilia app gives users hands-on understanding of music theory and science, is simple to use, and creative. It is now used in schools in Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.
Björk cares about the environment and protecting Iceland’s landscape. She also supports people around the world who are fighting for their independence.
Virginia Woolf
Writer
(1882–1941)
Adeline Virginia Stephen grew up in a large, unconventional family. Although she didn’t have much formal schooling, she read everything and anything in her father’s huge library. Virginia’s family spent winters in London, UK, and summers in their house on the Cornish coast, southwestern England. Both locations appear in her writing.
In the early 1900s Virginia became part of a circle of intellectuals, artists, and writers known as the Bloomsbury Group. It included Virginia’s older sister Vanessa Bell, who was a painter, and the writer Leonard Woolf who married Virginia in 1912.
The Woolfs founded Hogarth Press in 1917 and it went on to publish Virginia’s novels Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927). Both were groundbreaking, as they experimented with language, and the order in which the story was told. Her work made a huge contribution to literature, and influenced many future writers.
“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
She went on to write A Room of One’s Own (1929). Here she described the difficulties women face in a society where men hold all the power.
Sadly Virginia suffered with mental illness her whole life. In 1941 she felt she could no longer go on, and she committed suicide.
Frida Kahlo
Painter
(1907–54)
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón was born in Coyoacán, Mexico. Her father was German and her mother had mixed Spanish and indigenous ancestry. While growing up, Frida spent a lot of time with her father, who was a photographer. She developed a keen eye for detail and took painting classes, but her real ambition was to be a doctor.
Frida’s life changed in 1925 when she was involved in an accident—the bus she was on crashed into a streetcar and Frida nearly died. It took her months to recover. While she was stuck in bed, she started to paint in earnest, mostly portraits of family, friends, or herself.
“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.”
In 1927 Frida joined the Mexican Communist Party (PCM). She met the artist Diego Rivera, also in the PCM, the following year. He was 21 years older than Frida and famous for his huge murals, which were inspired by Mayan art. Frida showed him her paintings and he encouraged her to be an artist.
Influenced by Diego, Frida began to celebrate her Mexican heritage. She wore traditional dress and introduced elements of folk art to her paintings, such as bright textures, bold patterns, and flattened shapes.
In 1929 Frida and Diego married. They spent their first few years of marriage in the United States where Diego was painting. In 1933 they moved back to Mexico City. Their home was perfectly suited to their stormy relationship. It was actually two houses—one for each of them—joined by a bridge. The couple had no children but kept a menagerie of pets including monkeys, parrots, and xolos—hairless dogs that had been kept by the ancient Maya and Aztecs.
In 1938 Frida had her first solo exhibition in New York City, USA. She was finding international success as an artist, but her marriage to Diego was crumbling. They divorced in 1939 and Frida moved back to her childhood home, where she created some of her most vulnerable paintings.
In 1940 Frida and Diego remarried and they stayed married until her death. Frida spent her last years in extreme pain because of damage from the 1925 accident. She wore steel corsets and had lots of operations. In the end, she could not stand or walk, but she still painted.
Frida left behind many great artworks. She expressed her Mexican culture and above all she explored difficult feelings, such as pain, from a female viewpoint.
Simone de Beauvoir
Writer and Philosopher
(1908–86)
In the early 1900s many French girls grew up hoping to marry well, rather than earn money for themselves. It was traditional for brides to enter marriage with a sum of money called a dowry. Those from prosperous families had larger dowries, so they could be choosier about who they married.
Simone de Beauvoir was born into a middle-class family in Paris. Her father lost most of the family fortune just after World War I. Rather than making Simone hunt for a husband with a pitiful dowry, he decided to spend the little money they had on her education.
The family lived very frugally and their sacrifices paid off. Simone enjoyed studying and had a sharp mind. In 1929 she left the Sorbonne university in Paris with a degree in philosophy.
For the next 14 years Simone supported herself by teaching. She worked in high schools in Marseille, Rouen, and Paris. In 1943 her first novel, She Came to Stay, was published and Simone was finally able to become a full-time writer.
Simone is best known not for her novels but for her philosophical work The Second Sex (1949), which became a global bestseller. She argued that through history societies had treated women as a “second sex,” expecting them to live and behave in a way that suited the interests of men. As wives and mothers, women put the needs of their husbands and children before their own. Simone called for a future where men and women were treated as equals.
Simone lived by the ideas in The Second Sex. She met the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre while she was at university and they had a lifelong relationship. They never married, shared a home, or had children. They read each other’s work and went on trips together. They also agreed that each of them was free to have relationships with other people. They gave each other plenty of space and time so they could write and focus on their careers. Jean-Paul died in 1980 and Simone in 1986. They are buried side by side.
“I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely.”
Over the years, Simone produced an impressive number of works, including short stories, essays, travel diaries, and an autobiography. Her 1954 novel The Mandarins won the Prix Goncourt for its imaginative writing. In 1975 Simone won the Jerusalem Prize, which is awarded to people who write about freedom.
In the 1970s she became involved in the feminist movement. She took part in demonstrations, wrote articles, and signed open letters that demanded more rights for women. Simone’s greatest gift to women was showing that they can live however they choose and need to be responsible only for themselves.
Joanne (J. K.) Rowling
Writer, Film Producer, and Philanthropist
(b.1965)
Joanne Rowling was born near Bristol, in southwest England, UK. She loved reading from a young age and made up stories for her younger sister, including one about a clever giant rabbit.
Not long after Joanne left univ
ersity her mother died of multiple sclerosis (MS). She went to teach in Portugal, married, and had a baby. In 1993 she left her husband and moved to Edinburgh.
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.”
With no job and a daughter to look after, Joanne decided to write. She did this in local cafés because the baby used to fall asleep on the way. Joanne finished writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 1995. Twelve publishers rejected it before Bloomsbury published it in 1997.
Today Joanne is the world’s most successful author. Her Harry Potter series has been translated into 65 languages, turned into movies and a musical, and won numerous awards. Joanne was inspired to write a spin-off series, Fantastic Beasts. She has also written novels for adults. In 2000 Queen Elizabeth II made her an Official of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her services to children’s literature.
101 Awesome Women Who Changed Our World Page 6
