America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines

If I’m checking out a library book having anything to do with history, there’s a good chance it is for my husband. That’s his thing. He’s Mister Presidential Biography and certain time periods of interest and very little else.

Although I like to think of myself as a bit more diverse, literary-speaking, I admit my first section of choice isn’t always the history section. It feels too academic to me.

Which is why I was surprised at how much I enjoyed America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines by Gail Collins. As the title promises, Collins truly does pack 400 years of American women’s history into what is a chunkster of a book. Make no mistake, though: this is no dry textbook. Collins presents a comprehensive and thorough view of American women’s history in a way that is incredibly informative, engaging, shocking, and entertaining. At some points, I couldn’t put this down.

Beginning with the very first settlers at Jamestown, Collins traces the history and the stories of strong, formidable women through an ever-changing America during the Revolutionary War, slavery, pre-and post-Civil War, the pioneer days, the Gilded Age, and the Depression. There are the names from one’s school history books: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth Blackwell, Carrie Nation, Annie Oakley, Margaret Sanger and countless others – but whose individual stories and accomplishments we may not have ever quite completely learned or fully remember. Collins brings all of them – the dolls, drudges, helpmates, and heroines all back to life on these pages for her reader. (The title comes from a Susan B. Anthony quote: “When I was young if a girl married poor, she became a housekeeper and a drudge. If she married wealthy, she became a pet and a doll.”)

What I found especially interesting were the stories of the women who went unmentioned in the history books – the women we’ve never heard of. Or, at least, the ones I hadn’t heard of (I’m not going to mention them by name because I don’t want to look stupid in front of 15,000+ Eleventh Stack readers, but I’m betting there are a few women in here who aren’t household names to you, either).

America’s Women also gives the reader an inside look into women’s lives throughout each of the centuries, almost as if one was there churning the butter or sitting in the sewing room. It’s fascinating to see how life changed through the Revolutionary War and into the pre-Civil War years and post-slavery. Through her extensive research, Collins covers and presents all aspects of women’s lives – the homefront and the daily chores, women’s health (these sections are not for the faint-of-heart, trust me), popular literature, culture, fashion, and customs. Again, we “know” these things from our history books or perhaps from movies or other books. America’s Women does the reader a great service by encapsulating in one volume the vast history of this time period.

In many cases, I wanted to know more about these women. That’s not a criticism of the book itself, because especially with the histories of the women from the 1600s, what we know from that time is somewhat limited.

Fortunately, what we do know is all here in America’s Women. This is highly recommended for … well, really anybody who cares about American history. I think every American should read this, and I’m looking forward to reading Gail Collins’ follow up book, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present.

–Melissa F.

Pride Week @ CLP: The Stories That Won’t Let Go

There’s a story that won’t let go of me.

Some days, this book takes the form of a novel. On other days, it has flirted with being a collection of linked short stories and at times, it feels like it wants to be a memoir.

You won’t find this book on our shelves here at the Library (yet) because I’ve written and rewritten this story for … well, let’s just say it has been a few years.  Like most things in our lives, it is a SomedayMaybeLifeIsntGettingAnyShorter work in progress.

As those of you who are writers know, sometimes it takes longer than we’d like for a story to find its voice and its path.  And that’s where I am with this novel/short story collection/memoir of mine, which focuses on a family losing a loved one to AIDS in the midst of the epidemic.

So what to do when the words won’t come and the story won’t allow you to give up?

You write. And you read.

You read the stories of love taken too soon. You discover Mark Doty through his eloquent poetry and his gorgeous memoirs. You listen to Dog Years on audio and you — admittedly, not much of a dog person — cry on your commute home.

You read Paul Monette, who reminds you that we are all on Borrowed Time.

You read the impossible, improbable love story of Marion Winik and her husband Tony in First Comes Love.

You read Randy Shilts’ And The Band Played On and you wonder how different things would have been if better decisions had been made by the people in charge.

You read Michael Cunningham and you believe that every single one of his fictional characters are real.

You read Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt and Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan, and your admiration for the incredible quality of what is truly groundbreaking YA (young adult) and teen literature today increases exponentially. You are inspired and intimidated to add your words to that.

You read and you read some more. You realize that you have so much you want to and need to read and learn about the LGBTQ history, the sociology, about those who have gone before and those who are here now. You stand in awe at the shelves, at the words they hold, the lifetimes and legacies they capture. There is so much, and at the Library it is yours; it is all right here.

And then you realize why your story – and all of these stories – won’t let go.

It’s because you owe it to those whose stories have already been told and those whose epilogues were written too soon. It’s because you are a privileged white, straight, married female and you have an obligation to be an ally and a voice for those who are silenced and silent, and who don’t have the same legal rights as you do because of who they happen to love. It’s because there is a new generation emerging with opportunities that yours — the one growing up silenced, the one learning about love amid the stigma and fear — never did until it was sometimes too late.

“There is a nearly perfect balance between the past and the future.

As we become the distant past, you become a future few of us would have imagined.”

~ page 1 of Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan

~Melissa F.

 

 

Celebrate Good Times!

This week is National Library Week! 

Here are some reasons to celebrate. 8 Reasons to Hang Out at a Library. 9 Reasons Why Librarians are Awesome.

Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh is celebrating library books that change lives. Visit our website and tell your story. Here is mine!

The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley

I knew the tales of Camelot and King Arthur when I was a kid. They didn’t appeal to me then and they didn’t appeal to me as a young adult. I was a feminist before I knew it and all of the tales were dominated by men, which did not interest me. All the chicks in the traditional tales are either dimwits (Gwenhwyfar) or evil, ball-busting witches (Morgan le Fay). None of them have any personality or power; they are boring one-dimensional stereotypes. The Mists of Avalon tells the tales of Camelot from a woman’s point of view. And what women they were! Morgaine (Morgan le Fay) isn’t an evil sorceress, she’s misunderstood and wants to be loved! But her aunt Morgause sure is a jerk. Gwenhwyfar has a three-way! Igraine was a secret bad-ass who fell in love with a not-so-secret bad-ass and produced Arthur! Lancelet isn’t so gallant. King Arthur is wonderful, but sometimes spoiled and petulant. If you’re a reader like me, you’ll also appreciate the boatload of prequels and sequels.

James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl

When I first considered what books changed me, this is the first book I went to. I don’t necessarily relate to James: I’m not an orphan, no mean aunts abused me and unfortunately, no one has ever given me a sack of magical, glowing-green, crocodile tongues. What James and the Giant Peach did do was make me realize the potential for storytelling and fiction and OMG books are amazing. This is the first “chapter” book I was exposed to, thanks to my third grade teacher (shout out to Mrs. Cypher nee Garrett.) This is also the book I chose to read from for the library’s 24 Hour Read Aloud.

The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

Oh, Edmund Dantes, how could Mercedes give up on you? Thanks to a very good friend (looking at you, DWR) I was more or less forced to read this book. There was some cajoling involved (“C’mon, you’ll love it. Honest!”) All I knew about Dumas was The Three Musketeers movie- which, no.  Again, being contrary means saying sorry because I loved- devoured- this book. It introduced me to a new genre (ADVENTURE!). I moved on from The Count of Monte Cristo to the rest of Dumas and then to books about pirates and prison breaks. The biography about Alexandre Dumas’ father (the son of an African slave and French nobleman) called The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss shows that many of Dumas’ characters were inspired by his own pops.

The Bachman Books, Stephen King

You know the movie The Running Man? It came from this book of short stories. And it’s the worst story of the four! The other three stories, Rage, The Long Walk, and Road Work would all be amazing movies. I was probably too young to read this, but whatever. This book inspired me in two ways. First of all, as a budding writer, it introduced me to the idea of short stories. I mean, I was 11 and wanted to write a novel. There’s not much to go on at that age. But a short story? Oh yes, that could be done! Second, it was the first time I was ever emotionally invested in a character. I loved Peter McVries (The Long Walk) and his scar and his sub-conscious death wish (which honestly was just a preview of coming attractions for me).

Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

Any time I mention enjoying Rand books, I immediately get flamed for being an egoist, an elitist, or a Republican. I’m none of those things. Not too many elitists work for the public library (I’m just saying). Like any book, you should take what you want/need from it. I didn’t swallow her philosophy whole, but you know what? She had some smart things to say about the nature of happiness and joy, and valuing yourself. I’m not going to push an old lady into the street and I donate to charity, but there is something to be said for being aware of your worth. Self-confidence is sexy, yo. It’s also simply a good story, especially if you like heavy industry, politics, and trains. And for readers that object to Objectivism (see what I did there?) as a philosophy, read this awesomeness.

War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

During my final semester as an undergrad, I took 19th Century Russian Masterpieces (I was there a long time, it was slim pickins’ at that point). The reading list was intense. Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky), Chekhov plays, Dead Souls (Gogol), Pushkin, and of course, the granddaddy of Russian novels, War and Peace. I was dreading it. I was intimidated by it. The name alone hurt my stomach. But since I wanted to graduate from college before I was 50, I sucked it up and opened it. Oh. My. Word. Four days later, I finished it, crying. It’s the Russian Gone with the Wind and don’t let anyone tell you different. Go Team Andrei!

I could write about a ton more books that have made a difference in my life. Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything taught me how to make a perfect hamburger and boil an egg. I have a line from a Ralph Waldo Emerson poem tattooed on me, so I’ll include him, too.

What books made a difference in your life?

happy reading!

suzy

Fairytales and Footnotes

I get caught up in kids books like some people get caught up in Facebook posts. I get angry and flustered, I sympathize and obsess. It can be intense and I should probably see someone about this issue.  Right now I am stuck on The Sisters’ Grimm. Two young, seemingly orphaned sisters are sent to live with a supposedly dead grandmother they have never met in a town in upstate New York populated by fairy tale characters. If that run-on sentence didn’t pique your interest in these books, I don’t know what would.

Written for elementary school readers, the books cover the basics: introducing new words, handling sibling squabbles, crushes and rivalries. But like the actual Grimm tales they also help readers navigate some of the darker themes we find in humanity; jealousy, feelings of not belonging, fear and even death.

These books got me wondering about the resurgence we have seen of fairytales in general and the Grimm legacy specifically¹. I may or may not have spent an entire two days glued to the tv watching the first season of Grimm, tossing cereal and hot dogs at my starving family. I am patiently waiting (my family not so much) for the library to send me my hold on season two, but now I wanted to know about the actual men.

Some of the biographies and histories I found were a little dated but gave a good understanding of the history of the Grimms, but my favorite has to be Clever  Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales. Our own cultural understanding of Jacob and Wilhelm, as Clever Maids author Valerie Paradiz points out, is displayed in movies like Ever After and The Brothers Grimm. Two adventurous men roaming the countryside in order to collect folk tales from peasants and commoners.

Turns out, not so much². Most of the brothers’ tales were supplied to them by the friends of their sister and several other women in their own circle of the educated middle class. Many were stories the women had heard as girls, lessons on how to be a good woman and respectful wives, told to them by their elders and household maids and the nannies who raised them³. During a time of war and French occupation the intellectual and learned men of Prussia and the German states were looking to idealize the history of the volk as a way to create a sense of unity.⁴ Many of these stories were collected and transcribed by Jacob and Wilhelm as a tribute to the sensible, pious, hard-working German way of life, regardless of where the stories actually came from. Clever Maids gives us insight to the collection of what we know as Grimm’s Fairytales through their origins and history as well as insight on to the very human trait of needing a shared history. So pick up some books about kid detectives, histories on folktales or a supernatural TV series this week, you might be surprised by what you find!

–Natalie

^{1. At this point I have a whole scatterbrained (My husband’s term for most of my ideas, and yes this is a parenthetical in a footnote, so what?) theory about how the political atmosphere in the collection of German states at the time mirrors our own political atmosphere, a society looking for something to pull us together, yearning for simpler times hoping to influence the future and politics with that national pride…look I said scatterbrained, okay! Why are you reading a footnote in a blog anyway?}

^{2. Believe me this killed the Margaret Mead wanna-be in me. As a student of Anthropology there is nothing I wanted more than to cling to the romantic idea that Jacob and Wilhelm traveled through the black forest, pen and ink bottle in hand, to collect stories from withered widows smoking pipes outside little thatch roofed cottages.}

^{3. Read Clever Maids. Seriously, you suddenly realize how the fairytales you thought you knew had different meaning in a different time and place.}

^{4. I know, right? I would have never guessed that Napoleon had anything to do with Little Red Riding Hood.}