Carrie Chapman Catt may not be as well-known to many readers today as sister suffragette and mentor Susan B. Anthony—but as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association during the critical years immediately before and during passage of the 19th Amendment, her impact was at least as great. In a lively retelling of Catt’s life that includes recognition of her “partner for life,” Mary Garrett Hay, author Jasmine A. Stirling introduces readers to this important and inspiring figure.
As a child, young Carrie was full of questions, the book tells us, like “How many stars are in the sky?” “Do germs have personalities?” “And why can’t Mama vote?” When she learned that women couldn’t vote, hold office, or even work in most professions in much of the country, “The truth sank into Carrie’s bones.”
In defiance of her father, who didn’t believe girls needed higher education, Carrie washed dishes to put herself through college. She joined the suffragist movement, learning from Susan B. Anthony and other women—but then began to question even that movement and its strategy. Instead of being a few “rebels on the fringe,” the movement needed to attract millions, and to make fighting for suffrage “creative, celebratory, and fun.”
Carrie set about making this happen—so successfully that Susan B. Anthony asked her to take over leadership of the movement from her. We follow Carrie’s efforts through defeat in New York State, into the Great War where women began to do jobs on the homefront that no women had done before, and on to an eventual victory in New York. We see President Wilson, despite qualms, supporting her work, grateful for women’s help in the war effort. Finally, Congress passed the 19th Amendment—but it was the ratification of this amendment by the states that forms the suspenseful climax of the narrative, as it all comes down to one legislator in Tennessee, and one pointed letter from his mother.
Stirling also successfully includes Carrie’s partner in the narrative, making their relationship clear without using ahistorical terms. “Carrie had loved and lost two husbands. Now she loved a woman,” Stirling tells us. Mary Garrett Hay, or “Mollie Brown Eyes,” was Carrie’s “confidante, strategist, and partner for life.” Yet Carrie knew that expanding the suffragist movement meant being “relatable and respectable and safe,” so “Carrie kept their relationship—and her most radical ideas—private.”
We see Mollie by Carrie’s side on other pages, too—and after their final victory, “The couple of twenty-five years made their happy way, amid flashing bulbs and mobs of dignitaries, to New York’s last magnificent suffrage parade.”
When Carrie died in 1947, she was buried, per her wishes, next to Mollie, the book notes in the backmatter.
Stirling has created a historical biography that sparkles with excitement, putting readers in the moment with its heroine and her thinking, and offering just the right amount of detail and backstory to inform but not overwhelm. While the story is in prose, parts are laid out in poetry-like form, giving the words power and lyricism.
Udayana Lugo’s illustrations capture Catt’s dynamic spirit as she rallies and writes and works for her cause. Some images zoom in on maps or documents, others show us Catt at work or crowds of suffragettes and others. One of the most poignant, however, is the image of Catt lying barefoot and exhausted on a hotel bed while in Tennessee for the final ratification vote. Catt is a powerhouse, but we see the toll her efforts have taken. It’s a lovely humanizing moment.
Stirling gives a nod to other civil rights issues by noting on one page that the women “antis” who were opposed to the 19th Amendment “insisted that if Black women voted, there would be riots, mayhem, and blood in the streets.” We also see some Black women among the suffragettes on several pages. Stirling says in an Author’s Note that she spent several years researching Catt, “consulting Black suffrage scholars, studying queer history,” and more. She notes that she saw “how White suffragists often excluded Black women” and that “although all adult citizens were granted the right to vote in 1920, that right was, and still is, often denied to many U.S. citizens.”
That is not explored in the main story, however, so I hope that adult readers will use the backmatter to have further discussions with younger ones about racism and voting rights, and will use the book as a jumping-off point to explore picture-book biographies of other suffragists, including Black leaders such as Ida B. Wells and Frederick Douglass. Dare to Question’s clarity and verve make it an excellent place to start, though, for it is a charming, engaging, and informative biography that should ignite young readers’ interest in voting and civil rights, even as it provides an important model of a same-sex relationship from more than a century ago.
Disclosure: I was asked by Jasmine Stirling to partner by joining the online book tour for this book (although, because it is a queer-inclusive children’s book, I would have reviewed it for this database in any case). I received a digital copy of the book from the publisher, but no monetary or other compensation. My opinions remain my own.
