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 high school, Kasia Van Schaik's life has led her from her native South Africa to British Columbia to Berlin to Montreal, first as a struggling student, then a nanny, and then as a burgeoning academic studying some of the world's most famous artists. Throughout this time, she found herself thinking about 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 Georgia O'Keeffe to Ana Mendieta, Gertrude Stein to Jamaica Kincaid, Leslie Marmon Silko to Bernadette Mayer - as well as women from Kasia's own life, Women Among Monuments asks some essential questions. 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?

In her memoir interwoven with incisive biographies of female solitude, constraint, and perseverance, Kasia Van Schaik blazes a path for more inclusive artmaking practices, communities, and monuments.