Women Among Monuments: Solitude, Permission, and the Pursuit of Female Genius

by Kasia Van Schaik

A lyrical meditation on the enduring obstacles women artists and writers face in a world still unaccustomed to recognizing female genius.

Voted the “Next Picasso” in her rural high school’s yearbook, South-African Canadian author Kasia Van Schaik considers what it means for a young woman to take up a mantle usually reserved for white heterosexual male genius. Drawing on a diverse web of literary and cultural sources and artistic icons, from Michelangelo to Ana Mendieta, Gauguin to Gertrude Stein, and Alice Walker to Alice Munro, Women Among Monuments asks what, beyond a room of one’s own, are the necessary conditions for female genius? Where does the inner flint of artistic permission come from? What is the oxygen that keeps it burning?

Through her lyrical biographies of female solitude, constraint, and perseverance, Kasia Van Schaik blazes a path for more inclusive artmaking practices, communities, and monuments.

A RARE MACHINES BOOK

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

272 pages, Paperback

Published August 26, 2025

Reviews

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's got all of my favourite subject matter: lives of creative women, the writing life, how to balance my duties with creative work. Much of the material, except for Van Schaik's own life details, were familiar to me but I enjoyed her take on it. Very highly recommend.

[Jessi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carry a notebook and record the most mundane things in the most unusual sentences. Ride a hot air balloon along the earth’s melting surface. Watch its fire from a distance, the red sooty legions of industry crawling Arctic-ward like stretch marks. Crochet your way out of sadness using undyed wool.

[Book Nibbler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel this book was written about me. It's for all of us pretending to be artist because we have too many other duties that keep us from creating art.
This is a book about feminism, about art, about introspection, creative thought, and historical figures. You could say this was almost the author's dissertation but it was never boring. This is a writing I had to read slowly broken down over a few months so I could think about each point.

I received a free ARC from Netgalley, the review is my own opinion.

[K.R. Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where, among the western world’s public monuments, are the women? Not female allegories of virtues, of whom there are plenty, but actual, historical women?

Part memoir, part cultural history, Kasia Van Schaik’s Women Among Monuments takes this question as the jumping-off point for a fascinating exploration of the spaces our society makes—or resists making—for female genius, what the nature of that genius might be, and what the necessary conditions are for women to claim access to these spaces.

[Enid Wray]

DNF