---

A few years ago I created a talk, Badass Florida Women, and now I’m turning it into a book proposal. There are a lot of women in Florida’s history who have been neglected or written around as we record the creation of the state we know today.

Badass Florida Women

The first, of course, was Emateloye, known to some as Polly Parker. Florida Spectacular ends with her story. But there were others who came after her: Bertha Honoré Palmer,  Julia Tuttle,  Margaret Shippen Roebling… and those are the wealthy white women. Don’t forget Mary McLeod Bethune, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwen Cherry, or Gladys Pumariega Soler.

Anyway, I’m almost done with the book proposal, except for the writing sample. For some reason it’s giving me fits and I want to scream when I sit down to write it.

What do I say? That these women were incredible but not nearly celebrated enough? That they did things remarkable for any human, not simply for a woman? That the time has come for people to learn all the history, not merely the stuff the old white guys in academia’s ivory towers think we should know?

Well, yes. I should write all those things. It’s putting everything into cogent sentences and making it eminently readable that proves troublesome.

But I’ll get to the sample and in it I’ll write about one of these Florida women — the list is at about 25 now — and hopefully it will engage an editor enough to want more, and then it will engage readers enough to make the book sell well, and, at the end, we’ll have one more crack in the wall that keeps stories of women out of history.

Wish me luck.

(And yes, for those of you paying attention, I’m still working on the Florida version of Last Chance To See, but that’s going to take years and this is something I can write in between road trips to see bats and butterflies and beautifully grotesque plants.)