[Book review] Bringing women to light. The task of women’s history. Discovering women’s history in Malta

Abstract

What is it to encounter women who have long been gone and to hear of their stories and of their actions? It is to imagine where they lived, what they did, what was going through their minds and perhaps, at times even understand them. For although their contexts of life are blurred by the distance of time, one can feel their anxieties, frustrations, successes and joy and at times feel for them, and for the injustices they suffered. This is possible because the authors of chapters in the book Discovering Women’s History in Malta, edited by Prof. Yosanne Vella, bring the accounts about these women to light. They bring them alive through their scholarly works that give meaning to women’s past lives in Malta, while identifying the various discourses and conditions that shaped their lives as feminine subjects. The hard labour of the authors of this book in searching for documents seem to match the arduous labour of the women protagonists of history, who through their sometimes unexpected and subversive actions, show us who they are. [excerpt]