In The Women I Think About at Night Mia Kankimäki blends travelogue memoir and biography as
she 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 Artemisia 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 part travelogue and part thrilling exploration of the lost women adventurers of
history who defied expectations in order to see-and change-the world.
