A World of Widows

A World of Widows
Author: Margaret Owen
Publisher: Zed Books
Total Pages: 232
Release: 1996-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781856494205

A World of Widows provides a global overview of the status for widowhood. Neglected by social policy researches, international human rights activists and the women's movement, the status of the world's widows - legal, social, cultural, and economic - is an urgent issue given the extent and the severity of the discrimination against them. Margaret Own explores the process of becoming a widow; poverty and social security in the context of widowhood; differing laws and customs regarding widow's inheritance; the situation of widows who remarry and issues of sexuality and health. She also looks at the needs of specific groups of widows - refugees, older widows, child widows - and widowhood in the context of AIDS. Throughout, she shows the prevalence of discrimination against widows in inheritance rights, land ownership, custody of children, security of home and shelter, nutrition and health. The book concludes with a summary of widowhood as a human rights issues and an overview of widows themselves organising for change.

The Revolt of the Widows

The Revolt of the Widows
Author: Stevan L. Davies
Publisher: SIU Press
Total Pages: 160
Release: 1980
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780809309580

No child of this century, women’s liber­ation existed as a Christian movement in the 2nd century. In this first study of the social context that produced the Apocryphal Acts, Stevan L. Davies con­tends that women wrote the Acts and that the “Acts appear to have been a striving by Christian women for both a mode of self-expression and a way to preach rebellion for the sake of sexual continence.” These early rebels—called widows because they left their husbands for the church—refused absolute subservience to the male hierarchy of the church. The three parts of Davies’s study in­clude an investigation of the magical world view of late 2nd-century Christen­dom; a close look at the people the Acts describe as new Christian converts; and a summary and analysis of the nature of the authors of the Acts. These women, like their sisters today, were seeking equal standing with men in the Chris­tian church.

Unremarried Widow

Unremarried Widow
Author: Artis Henderson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2014-01-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1451649304

“A frank, poignant memoir about an unlikely marriage, a tragic death in Iraq, and the soul-testing work of picking up the pieces” (People) in the tradition of such powerful bestsellers as Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and Carole Radziwill’s What Remains. Artis Henderson was a free-spirited young woman with dreams of traveling the world and one day becoming a writer. Marrying a conservative Texan soldier and becoming an Army wife was never part of her plan, but when she met Miles, Artis threw caution to the wind and moved with him to a series of Army bases in dusty Southern towns, far from the exotic future of her dreams. If this was true love, she was ready to embrace it. But when Miles was training and Artis was left alone, she experienced feelings of isolation and anxiety. It did not take long for a wife’s worst fears to come true. On November 6, 2006, the Apache helicopter carrying Miles crashed in Iraq, leaving twenty-six-year-old Artis—in official military terms—an “unremarried widow.” In this memoir Artis recounts not only the unlikely love story she shared with Miles and her unfathomable recovery in the wake of his death—from the dark hours following the military notification to the first fumbling attempts at new love—but also reveals how Miles’s death mirrored her own father’s, in a plane crash that Artis survived when she was five years old and that left her own mother a young widow. Unremarried Widow is “a powerful look at mourning as a military wife….You can finish it in a day and find yourself haunted weeks later” (The New York Times Book Review).

From Wives to Widows in Early Modern Paris

From Wives to Widows in Early Modern Paris
Author: Janine M. Lanza
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2016-04-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317131533

Looking especially at widows of master craftsmen in early modern Paris, this study provides analysis of the social and cultural structures that shaped widows' lives as well as their day-to-day experiences. Janine Lanza examines widows in early modern Paris at every social and economic level, beginning with the late sixteenth century when changes in royal law curtailed the movement of property within families up to the time of the French Revolution. The glimpses she gives us of widows running businesses, debating remarriage, and negotiating marriage contracts offer precious insights into the daily lives of women in this period. Lanza shows that understanding widows dramatically alters our understanding of gender, not only in terms of how it was lived in this period but also how historians can use this idea as a category of analysis. Her study also engages the historiographical issue of business and entrepreneurship, particularly women's participation in the world of work; and explicitly examines the place of the law in the lived experience of the early modern period. How did widowed women use their newly acquired legal emancipation? How did they handle their emotional loss? How did their roles in their families and their communities change? How did they remain financially solvent without a man in the house? How did they make decisions that had always been made by the men around them? These questions all touch upon the experience of widows and on the ways women related to prevalent structures and ideologies in this society. Lanza's study of these women, the ways they were represented and how they experienced their widowhood, challenges many historical assumptions about women and their roles with respect to the law, the family, and economic activity.

The School for Widows

The School for Widows
Author: Clara Reeve
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2003
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780874138047

Frances, Rachel, and Isabella not only survive their trials, but eventually become productive and beneficial members of society, thus serving as positive examples of the potential opportunity for widows in eighteenth-century England."--BOOK JACKET.

Saturday Night Widows

Saturday Night Widows
Author: Becky Aikman
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2013-12-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307590445

In this transcendent and infectiously wise memoir, Becky Aikman—a widow, too young, too modern to accept the role—forms an unlikely group with five other young widows, each seeking a way forward in a strange and disquieting world. A warm, witty, and compassionate guide on this journey, Aikman explores surprising new discoveries about how people are transformed by adversity, learning the value of new experiences, humor, and friendship. The Saturday Night Widows band together to bring these ideas to life, striking out on ever more far-flung adventures and navigating the universal perils of finding love and meaning. Theirs is a transporting true story of six marriages, six heartbreaks, and one shared beginning—an inspiring testament to what friends can achieve when they hold each other up. Saturday Night Widows is the rare book that will make you laugh, think, and remind yourself that despite the utter unpredictability and occasional tragedy of life, it is also precious, fragile, and often more joyous than we recognize. Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content

The Story of a Widow

The Story of a Widow
Author: Musharraf Ali Farooqi
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2009-08-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307372995

“One day when she looked at the portrait, she considered how blessed she had been in life. She contemplated her good fortune in finding an upright man like Akbar Ahmad as her life partner and felt grateful for his bounteous legacy, which released her from all financial cares. Akbar Ahmad looked back at her, his face cast in an expression of long suffering. Mona’s eyes welled up with tears.”–from The Story of a Widow After the death of her husband Akbar Ahmad, Mona finds herself settling ambivalently into a new life. But the calm rhythm of her days–gardening, cooking, time with her neighbours and family in Karachi–is upset by the appearance of Salamat Ali, the new tenant in her friend Mrs. Baig’s house. Vivacious, friendly, and at times almost impertinent, Salamat Ali is both a breath of fresh air and a disconcerting new presence in Mona’s life, and their awkward meetings always seem to end in embarrassment or misunderstanding. When Salamat Ali, encouraged by Mrs. Baig, presents Mona with a marriage proposal, she is forced to consider what kind of future she wishes to make for herself–and what her past with Akbar Ahmad really means. The possibility of Mona marrying Salamat Ali shocks her grown daughters Tanya and Amber, and scandalizes her extended family, according to whom Mona’s happiness comes second to what people say about widows who remarry. As Mona negotiates the complex web of tradition-bound in-laws and gossiping, interfering relatives, she finds Salamat Ali waking her to the pleasures of life that thirty years with her dour first husband all but smothered. But if Salamat Ali helps her discover something essential, he also exposes her to new risks, and new dangers. The Story of a Widow is a beautifully observant novel, one that pays careful attention to the delicate movements of the heart in romantic and family life. But it is equally concerned with the mores of a society in which traditional roles both support and constrain men and–particularly–women. Gently humorous and profoundly perceptive, The Story of a Widow is the moving tale of a woman’s discovery of her voice, and herself.

British Widows of the First World War

British Widows of the First World War
Author: Andrea Hetherington
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2018-04-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1473886783

Widows of the Great War is the first major account of the experience of women who had to cope with the death of their husbands during the conflict and then rebuild their lives. It explores each stage of their bereavement, from the shock of receiving the news that their husband had been killed, through grief and mourning to the practical issues of compensation and a widow's pension. The way in which the state and society treated the widows during this process is a vital theme running through the book as it reveals in vivid detail how the bureaucracy of war helped and hindered them as they sought to come to terms with their loss. Andrea Hetherington also describes often overlooked aspects of bereavement, and she features many telling first-hand accounts from the widows themselves which show how they saw their situation and how they reacted to it. Her study gives us a fascinating insight into the way in which the armed services and the government regarded war widows during the early years of the twentieth century.

Widow

Widow
Author: Michelle Latiolais
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781934137307

Presents a collection of short stories that focus on the loss of a lifetime partner.

Happily Even After

Happily Even After
Author: Carole Fleet
Publisher: Cleis Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2012-05-15
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1936740133

The award-winning author of Widows Wear Stilettos and grief recovery expert helps women cope with the legal and financial difficulties associated with the death of a spouse as well as going back to work, and eventually dating again. 10,000 first printing.