In celebration of Women’s History Month, local author Gail M. Beaton will be reading from her new book Colorado Women: A History at the Boulder Book Store on March 13, 2013. Beaton, who earned her Master’s degree at the University of Colorado at Denver, is a retired public school teacher and a community college instructor.
Colorado Women is the first full-length chronicle of the lives, roles, and contributions of women in Colorado from prehistory through the modern day. Colorado was one of the first states to approve suffrage and the first to elect a woman to its legislature. Nevertheless, only a small fraction of the literature on Colorado history is devoted to women and, of those, most focus on well-known individuals. The experiences of Colorado women differed greatly across economic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. Marital status, religious affiliation, and sexual orientation colored their worlds and others’ perceptions and expectations of them. Each chapter addresses the everyday lives of women in a certain period, placing them in historical context, and is followed by vignettes on women’s organizations and notable individuals of the time. Native American, Hispanic, African American, Asian and Anglo women’s stories hail from across the state–from the Eastern Plains to the Front Range to the Western Slope–and in their telling a more complete history of Colorado emerges (Amazon.com).
Beaton’s reading will be held on March 13 at 7:30 pm. Vouchers for the reading and book signing are $5, and you can receive $5 off the purchase of the book or any purchase on the day of the event. Vouchers can be purchased in advance at the Boulder Book Store, by phone at (303) 447-2074, or in person on the day of the event.
