Curated playlist
American women autobiographers
- Hillary ClintonAround 1961, a girl from the Chicago suburbs wrote a letter to NASA. Hillary Rodham, later known as Hillary Clinton, wanted to know what she could do to become an astronaut. The reply was blunt. Women were not being accepted into the…
- Elizabeth TaylorAfter Rock Hudson said he was dying of AIDS, Elizabeth Taylor helped found a research foundation in 1985.
- Mariah CareyMariah Carey handed her demo tape to a record boss at a party in December 1988. He turned his car around.
- Paris HiltonParis Hilton became so inescapable in 2007 that parts of the American press tried to stop mentioning her. The Associated Press attempted to leave her out for the week of the 19th of February 2007. On the 26th of June 2007, host Mika…
- Serena WilliamsSerena Williams won the 2017 Australian Open while already pregnant. She did not yet know it.
- Megyn KellyMegyn Kelly stood on a rally stage in Pittsburgh on the 4th of November 2024, one day before the presidential election, and endorsed Donald Trump. She told the crowd he would be a "protector" of women. Afterward she posted a selfie with…
- KeshaKesha's big break in 2009 came from walking into a recording session by accident.
- Barbra StreisandBarbra Streisand once filed a lawsuit that sent a crowd of strangers to look at a single photograph. In 2003 she claimed that a website documenting coastal erosion had invaded her privacy. Among its more than 12,000 images, one happened to…
- Rashida JonesRashida Jones was still a teenager in 1994 when she answered one of the best-known rappers in America in print. Tupac Shakur had made scathing remarks in The Source about her parents' interracial marriage. Her open letter in reply drew…
- Drew BarrymoreDrew Barrymore was seven years old when she hosted Saturday Night Live on the 20th of November 1982, and nobody has hosted at a younger age since. The American actress went on to build a career that ran from child stardom to her own…
- La Toya JacksonLa Toya Jackson was born on the 29th of May 1956 at St Mary's Mercy Hospital in Gary, Indiana, on her sister Rebbie's sixth birthday. She was the fifth of ten children born to Joe and Katherine Jackson, and the middle daughter, sitting…
- Assata ShakurCuba's Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that a woman died in Havana on the 25th of September 2025. She was 78 years old. For 45 of her years, she had been a fugitive from the United States. American authorities knew her as Joanne…
- Angela DavisAngela Davis was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, then acquitted by an all-white jury.