The Women I Think About at Night: Traveling the Paths of My Heroes

Mia Kankimäki

Aug 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Lisa Negron

About this audiobook

In this "thought-provoking blend of history, biography, women's studies, and travelogue" (Library Journal) Mia Kankimäki recounts her enchanting travels in Japan, Kenya, and Italy while retracing the steps of ten remarkable female pioneers from history. What can a forty-something childless woman do? Bored with her life and feeling stuck, Mia Kankimäki leaves her job, sells her apartment, and decides to travel the world, following the paths of the female explorers and artists from history who have long inspired her. She flies to Tanzania and then to Kenya to see where Karen Blixen-of Out of Africa fame-lived in the 1920s. In Japan, Mia attempts to cure her depression while researching Yayoi Kusama, the contemporary artist who has voluntarily lived in a psychiatric hospital for decades. In Italy, Mia spends her days looking for the works of forgotten Renaissance women painters of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and finally finds her heroines in the portraits of Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, and Atremisia Gentileschi. If these women could make it in the world hundreds of years ago, why can't Mia? The Women I Think About at Night is "an astute, entertaining . . . [and] insightful" (Publishers Weekly) exploration of the lost women adventurers of history who defied expectations in order to see-and change-the world.

About the author

Mia Kankimäki has worked with books all her life: she has a master's degree in comparative literature from the University of Helsinki, and she has worked as a copywriter and editor at various publishing houses. Her travels in Tanzania, Kenya, Italy, and Japan inspired her book The Women I Think About at Night.

Lisa Negron is an award-winning stage actress with over four decades of acting, singing, improv, and storytelling experience. A narrator with her own professional studio, she has recorded audiobooks in genres ranging from sci-fi/fantasy to nonfiction to Christian romance to crime thriller.