Women in Passing: A Conceptual Visual Book of Women in 1950’s New York (Hardcover)

They were seen. They were present. But too often, their names were never remembered.

In the streets, offices, beauty salons, shops, cafés, and neighborhoods of 1950s New York City, women were building lives, pursuing ambitions, creating businesses, working, loving, dreaming, and quietly contributing to a rapidly changing world.

Yet history does not always remember the names of the women who lived between its celebrated moments.

Women in Passing is an illustrated historical fiction storybook that gives imaginative life to those women—the ones whose photographs might have survived without their names, whose faces may have appeared briefly in the background of history, and whose ordinary lives were no less meaningful simply because they went largely unrecorded.

Across 35 visually rich scenes, six fictional women—Evelyn, Lillian, Mei, Sofia, Ruth, and Francesca—move through 1950s New York, each carrying her own ambitions, responsibilities, disappointments, triumphs, and private hopes.

They are not necessarily friends.

They do not share one life.

Sometimes they notice one another. Sometimes they don't.

They simply pass.

And in those passing moments, the book asks the reader to consider something larger: How many women have we seen in old photographs, city streets, workplaces, family albums, and historical records without ever knowing their names? Who were they when no one was documenting their stories? What did they want? What did they accomplish? What did they leave behind?

Pairing narrative storytelling with vintage-inspired imagery, Women in Passing allows each scene to unfold first through words and then through its visual interpretation, creating an immersive portrait of women's lives in mid-century New York.

This is not a story about famous women.

It is a story inspired by the countless women who lived, worked, dreamed, contributed, and passed through history without history always stopping to ask their names.

Book Details

• Size: 8.25 × 11 inches
• Interior: Premium Full Color
• Illustrations: 35 scenes
• Available Formats: Paperback, Hardcover & eBook
• Author: Erica M. Holston
• Publisher: Black Orchid Press

Women in Passing: A Conceptual Visual Book of Women in 1950's New York is a reflective illustrated historical fiction experience about visibility, identity, womanhood, ambition—and the significance of lives that deserved to be remembered.

Written and created by Erica M. Holston
Black Orchid Press