TRAILBLAZERS, 2Leaf Press’ long awaited series that honors African American women, debuts first volume

Since slavery, black women have struggled to liberate themselves from racism and sexism. Yet despite these hurdles and under the most duress circumstances, they managed to achieve greatness. TRAILBLAZERS, Black Women Who Helped Make America Great, American Firsts/American Icons by Gabrielle David shines a light on these historically marked footholds, which often led to more widespread cultural change. TRAILBLAZERS is a four-volume series that examines the lives and careers of over 400 brilliant women from the eighteenth century to the present who blazed uncharted paths in every conceivable way. The volumes will be released over the course of 2020 and 2021. The first volume is scheduled to publish November 1, 2020, and is available for pre-order on major online outlets.

Each TRAILBLAZERS volume is organized into five sections. Besides providing biographical information written in a warm and welcoming tone, replete with powerful photographs, David provides a historical overview for each section written from the viewpoint of black women that maps out the significance of the featured women that follow. An additional section of additional names with short bios is also included in the back of the book.

Volume 1 features activists, business women and entrepreneurs, dancers, politicians and individuals in government service, and athletes. We learn about the significance of activists like Ella Baker, Pauli Murray, Rosina Tucker, and Clara Day, who represent the hundreds of unnamed women who participated in the civil rights movement. We re-discover awe-inspiring entrepreneurs such as Maggie Lena Walker, Annie Minerva Turnbo Malone and Ernesta G. Procope who set the stage for activist-entrepreneurs like Arlan Hamilton.  The nearly forgotten tap dancer Jeni Legon and ballroom dancer Margot Webb are honored alongside dance legends Josephine Baker, Katherine Dunham and Janet Collins, and a new generation of dancers and choreographers like Camille A. Brown, Cynthia Oliver and Misty Copeland. We are reminded of Crystal Bird Fauset, Cora Mae Brown, Velvalea Phillips and Shirley Chisholm, the first black women elected to office and how newcomers like Lori Lightfoot, London Breed and Ilhan Omar followed their path by becoming American firsts.  And then there are the black woman athletes who disrupted the world of sports for the better, including the nearly forgotten tennis champion Ora Washington, and Alice Coachman, the first to compete and win in the Olympics, to Violet Renice Palmer, the first to referee a major sport. Throughout the series, as David re-introduces many of these women into the public sphere, they are not always in predictable ways. For example, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter makes an appearance in this volume, not for her musical career, but as a businesswoman, reminding us that black women are multifaceted, multitalented, and complex. What binds these women together is that as they struggled on the front lines, they also challenged and shook-up the status quo of black people and women in America.

With painstaking research, David has created an affordable and visually appealing accessible reference book. From the foremothers who blazed trails and broke barriers, to today’s women warriors, TRAILBLAZERS features powerful and inspiring role models for women and girls from all cultural backgrounds who are poised to become super women of the future, as well as those people who are intellectually curious and want to learn more. TRAILBLAZERS is a clarion call for recognition of the transformative work black women have done and continue to do. For this reason, TRAILBLAZERS belongs on the bookshelf of every home, school, and library in America.

Pre-order Available on major online outlets. ISBN: 978-1940939797 (Print), appx 740 pages. List price: $34.99. To order review or exam copies call (773) 702-7109 or email orders@press.uchicago.edu. For interviews or speaking engagements:  gdavid@2leafpress.org. Check out TRAILBLAZERS’ website at https://blackwomentrailblazers.org and sign-up for updates.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: GABRIELLE DAVID is a multidisciplinary artist who attended LaGuardia Community College (CUNY) and New School University. She is the publisher of 2Leaf Press and serves as Executive Director of 2Leaf Press Inc. Over the years, she has participated in and organized poetry reading panel discussions, festivals and workshops, and has published articles and essays in numerous publications. David is the editor of Branches of the Tree of Life (2014), and co-editor of Hey Yo! Yo Soy! 40 Years of Nuyorican Street Poetry (2012). She is the author of the poetry chapbooks, Spring Has Returned and I Am Renewed (1996), and This is Me: A Collection of Poems and Things (1994).

ABOUT THE EDITOR: CAROLINA FUNG FENG, a translator and copy editor specializing in Spanish translations, ha worked on a number of 2Leaf Press’ titles, and is the co-translator of Hey Yo! Yo Soy! 40 Years of Nuyorican Street Poetry (2012). She has worked in adult education programs as an ESOL teacher, coordinator and administrator, and currently works as a census communications and digital campaigner for a nonprofit organization in New York. Fung Feng holds a BA in Spanish-English translation and interpretation, and English Language Arts from Hunter College (CUNY).

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS:
LYAH BETH LEFLORE is a television and film executive, producer, music supervisor, and the author of eight critically-acclaimed books, two of which are National Bestsellers. She is the author of the novels Wildflowers (2009), and Last Night A DJ Saved My Life (2006); and recently the co-author of Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil: The Life, Legacy, and Love of My Son Michael Brown (2020) by Lezley McSpadden. LeFlore recently established the Shirley Bradley LeFlore Foundation, a literary arts based organization with a specific outreach to women and artists of color, named in honor of her mother, who was St. Louis Poet Laureate and a top influencer in poetry and performance.

CHANDRA D. L. WARING is an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. Her research focuses on the growing bi/multiracial population. Her interest in race stems from being raised in a multiracial family in a three very different contexts: Germany, Georgia and Connecticut. Her work has been published in numerous publications and she earned her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Connecticut in 2013, where she was a Multicultural Fellow.

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