№ 792. Ann Dunham

She was just 17 when classmates called her “the original feminist,” long before the world had a name for what she already was.

Ann Dunham

In 1950s America, when girls were expected to be quiet, obedient, and agreeable, Stanley Ann Dunham — who insisted everyone call her “Ann” — spent her teenage years reading existentialist philosophy, questioning every social rule around her, and challenging the conservative community she grew up in. While other girls practiced how to be polite, she practiced how to think.

№ 330. Barak Obama

"My mother laughed once more, and once again I saw her as the child she had been. Except this time I saw something else: In her smiling, slightly puzzled face, I saw what all children must see at some point if they are to grow up — their parents’ lives revealed to them as separate and apart, reaching out beyond the point of their union or the birth of a child, lives unfurling back to grandparents, great-grandparents, an infinite number of chance meetings, misunderstandings, projected hopes, limited circumstances.