Joanna Scutts

Air Mail • 9th July 2022

Josephine Baker, Agent Provocatrice

Josephine Baker’s life—her rise from the slums of St. Louis to stardom on the cabaret stages of Paris and worldwide renown as a singer, dancer, impresario, and civil-rights activist—would be extraordinary enough without the part she played as a secret agent during World War II.

New_ Public • 14th June 2022

What data taught me about my pandemic baby

On trusting an infant tracker app during lockdown

Literary Hub • 10th June 2022

Secret, Unruly, and Progressive: The History of the Heterodoxy Club

On Saturday afternoon, in a place that feels, just then, like the brightly pulsing center of the universe, a group of women gathers to talk about the world, and their place in it. [Book excerpt]

Wall Street Journal • 28th April 2022

‘The Case of the Married Woman’ Review: After a Scandal, She Fought Back

When an Englishwoman of Caroline’s era married, she ceased to exist, legally. Her husband took possession of everything she had, then and in the future: her body, her money and her children. In return, he would protect her and provide for her. What enraged Caroline, and eventually drove her to fight for change, was the failure of her husband, and the courts, to uphold the bargain.

Frenchly • 8th April 2022

HBO Max's New Show: Julia Child's American Story

Focusing on her life after France, Julia follows the machinations, compromises, and determination that led to her merrily slapping a raw chicken on the counter and booming “bon appétit!” to a bewildered television crew. The rest is as much myth as history, and the show liberally mixes the two.

The New York Times Book Review • 29th March 2022

Today We’d Call Her a Progressive Heroine. She’d Have Hated It.

Over the course of the book, the mystery of Leslie’s birth pales in the face of a still greater riddle, which intensifies with every depression, recession, panic, crash, bankruptcy, lawsuit and family ruination: how anybody got the idea that capitalism works, and that men should be in charge of it.

Vulture • 12th October 2018

Orlando Is the Virginia Woolf Novel We Need Right Now

Woolf points out over and over again that what makes men men is their power, and what makes women women is their lack of it: financially, culturally, and physically.

Slate Magazine • 21st June 2018

We Love Telling Our Daughters About the Rebel Girls of History. Who Gets Forgotten?

Making change, especially in the lives of women and marginalized people, doesn’t happen in isolation.

The New York Times Book Review • 22nd January 2021

The Siblings Who Became America’s First Women Doctors

In hospitals for the poor, surgeons in blood-caked aprons went from handling corpses to delivering babies without washing their hands. What kind of woman would fight to join their ranks?

Literary Hub • 13th May 2019

How We Find—and Lose—Women Writers

The recovery of a neglected author can be an intimate, obsessive pursuit.

Curbed • 1st July 2015

Inside 1930s Designer Dorothy Draper's Riotously Colorful World

Dorothy Tuckerman Draper was far from the average Upper East Side society matron.

The Paris Review • 28th September 2020

Feminize Your Canon: Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Brief though it was, Alice Moore’s marriage to Paul Dunbar has tended to overshadow her achievements as a writer, even though she outlived him by three decades and married twice more.

The New Republic • 26th April 2019

The Art of Unruliness

History rarely pays attention to the stories of “wayward” girls born into poverty, still less to their desires and dreams.

The Guardian • 18th January 2020

Jacqueline Woodson Interview

"It's important to know that whatever moment we're in, it's not the first time."

The New Republic • 13th January 2020

How Crystal Eastman Fought for Equality

Who gets remembered, who gets lionized, in the history of leftist politics?

Curbed • 15th May 2019

Women on Wheels

The bicycle’s place on city streets has been contentious from the beginning.

The New Yorker • 1st July 2014

Gentlemen For Rent

Cities like New York have a way of coming up with solutions—skyscrapers, doormen, take-out coffee, laundry delivery, human rickshaws—to problems that they create themselves.

Washington Post • 23rd May 2019

Book Review: The Five

Readers who wish to linger over the bloody details of the murders will have to look elsewhere, in the rich seam of Ripper lore. This is a story of life, not death.

Bustle • 17th May 2019

Marjorie Hillis Changed The Way The World Thought About Single Women

In the summer of 1936, a short, snappy, and stealthily radical self-help book for single women became a surprise bestseller.

Times Literary Supplement • 13th September 2019

Team Scott vs Team Zelda

“People always believe the best story.”