The facade of the Peter White Public Library in Marquette. (Photo courtesy Travel Marquette)

These are titles at the Peter White Public Library that can help us all celebrate Women’s History Month:

• “Dead and Alive: Essays,” by Zadie Smith — Whether she’s building an army of a strong protagonists in fiction or delivering observations that are both clever and somber, it’s always a pleasure to experience Zadie Smith.

“Dead and Alive: Essays” exhibits her impressive (but not surprising) range, as she zooms in on the lives of artists (Kara Walker, Celia Paul), re-examines popular film, mourns writers who have passed (Joan Didion, Toni Morrison) and asks critical questions about government on both sides of the Atlantic.

In her own foreword, she refers to assembling this collection as “a tricky proposition”; critical and creative readers alive will be both moved and entertained by watching Smith make it happen once again.

• “Girl Warrior: On Coming of Age,” by Joy Harjo — In her previous memoir “Poet Warrior,” Joy Harjo told the story of personal artistic evolution. In “Girl Warrior,” she speaks directly to Native girls and women, telling stories about her own coming of age, along with those of her ancestors, using both to offer guidance for navigating struggles, challenges and joys of maturation.

Harjo highlights the importance of making art, writing and music, proposing “making” an avenue for developing both ethical sensibility and identity. This memoir is poignant, attentive and uplifting, highlighted as a top pick for both young people and educators.

• “The Improbable Victoria Woodhull: Suffrage, Free Love, and the First Woman to Run for President,” by Eden Collinsworth — In clear, vivid, exhaustively researched prose, Collinsworth tells the story of a woman ahead of her time.

Victoria Woodhull was considered radical, a visionary who made her own standards by defying them. She was an entrepreneur, political activist and suffragist. Woodhull was born poor in an obscure Ohio settlement, married at age 14, but through her own resourcefulness and determination, grew up to cofound a successful stock brokerage on Wall Street, launch a newspaper and became the first woman to run for president (in the 1872 election.)

If you enjoy history and tales of unsung trailblazers, this is an epic for you.

• “Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys” by Mariana Enriquez — Argentinian writer Mariana Enriquez, previously known for her gothic and horror fiction, makes her nonfiction debut with a meditative memoir, and an exploration of history that tours cemeteries on four continents. Enriquez’s extensive descriptions of the physical reveal what these places say about those who lay their dead to rest, and how a culture chooses to remember them.

Each leg of the journey is compelling. As Enriquez reminds us, “We are all, more or less always, walking over a greater or lesser number of dead. There are many more dead people than living; it’s a simple truth: we all end up turned into earth.”

With a topic that could easily turn bleak, Enriquez takes more investigative, thoughtful turns that feel honest instead of traumatizing.

Ann Richmond Garrett is an administrative assistant at the Peter White Public Library in Marquette.