Barbara Southard
Author of historical fiction, short stories and women’s history
Unruly Human Hearts
"In Unruly Human Hearts, Barbara Southard has created a delightful and poignant novel about the Beecher-Tilton scandal in the Reconstruction Era. Focusing on Elizabeth’s internal struggle to cope with her husband’s public support for women’s rights while maintaining the double standard in private, this story will inspire readers to ask themselves how women should confront similar challenges today. Perfect for fans of well-researched and engaging historical fiction!"
Jacqueline Friedland, author of The Stockwell Letters and Trouble the Water
“Barbara Southard’s stories locate themselves in the chaotic center of the colonial culture of Puerto Rico…They resonate with fascinating, nuanced responses to feminism, family breakup, traditional machismo, police violence, corruption, and horrific natural disasters. Well after each story ends on the page, the reader remains caught in the powerful social and personal crosscurrents of the protagonist’s struggles to navigate these rough waters of conflict with loved ones.”
Elena Lawton de Torruella, English Department, Universidad del Sagrado Corazon
The Pinch of the Crab
The Women's Movement and Colonial Politics in Bengal 1921-1936
“Southard analyzes the growth of the women’s movement in the crucial period between the two World Wars when the Indian nationalist movement gained momentum... What emerges is an appreciation of the complexities inherent in alliances between nationalist and feminist movements, and the constraints that limited the effectiveness of social reform movements under colonial conditions... Nevertheless, the women’s movement made important contributions in articulating the nature and extent of gender discrimination in their society…and arousing public support for social change.” Foreword, Book Cover