Even when I signed the papers to become a women's studies minor, I despised stupid cliches like "herstory". I even hated how the feminist group was called Center for Womyn's Concerns. It made us look unnecessarily angry, when we mostly passed out condoms, and sponsored speakers with an "admission charge" of personal items for the battered women's (sorry, womyn's) shelter.
But "The Girls Who Went Away" is an important piece of women's history that hasn't been examined much. During the 1950s and 1960s, a solution was imposed on the thousands of teenage girls who got knocked up: have them stay with a "sick aunt" at a home for unwed mothers, put their baby out for adoption, and then return to the community, with the secret kept. Many kept the secret for the rest of their lives.
Ann Fessler interviewed women who were "the girls that went away". Their stories are interspersed with a comprehensive look at what led to the rise of the homes for unwed mothers as a way of dealing with teenage pregnancy; what life at one of these homes was like; what drove the demand for adoptable white babies; and the lasting effects on everyone.
It's a very sad book. One of the first things that jumps out at a reader is how much the women in the book fail to conform to any stereotype about unwed mothers. They weren't all poor, or even mostly poor. They weren't all promiscuous: many got pregnant during their first time having sex, and others got pregnant by their boyfriends. And most of them wanted very much to keep their babies, but weren't allowed to.
That part was also very depressing, and what messed with the mothers the most. One woman compared the psychological pressures in the home for unwed mothers to those exerted on a soldier in basic training, explaining that they broke you down to rebuild you into what they wanted, a woman who would give up her child. They were reminded repeatedly how irresponsible they'd been, how much their stay was costing their parents, and how much better off their child would be with a "decent" family. Almost no one resisted. When they were back to their old lives, though, they were left to wonder why not.
Another notable thing about the book was how shockingly restricted information about sex and contraceptives were, so very recently. One woman said she wasn't worried about pregnancy, because she knew that pregnancy was for married women, so since she wasn't married, didn't think it'd be a problem. Another woman asked her mother how the baby was supposed to come out of her stomach. Condoms were kept behind the counter at pharmacies, and their use wasn't encouraged. It wasn't until 1965, with the Supreme Court case of Griswold vs. Connecticut, that some state laws banning the use of contraceptives were struck down. It wasn't until 1972 that that right was extended to everyone, not just married couples.
This book is compelling, important, and destined to become a classic. It's a powerful reminder, too, of how far women have come. Read it, and you'll have another reason to respect your mother's generation.
Showing posts with label memoir. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memoir. Show all posts
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
The amazing childhood of Catherine Gildiner
At the paper, I interview local authors a lot. In the year and a half I've been there, I've done stories on maybe ten different people who had written books. It's always pretty interesting, but one of my absolute favorites has been Catherine Gildiner.
My co-worker had actually read her first memoir, Too Close to the Falls. Her sequel, After the Falls, came out in November, and that was when I talked to her. I knew I'd like her from the opening description of their move to a suburban subdivision (when I first became aware of subdivisions, I promised myself that if anyone tried to make me move to one, I wouldn't even take the time to argue, I would just run, as from any dangerous situation. I actually still feel the same way. Gildiner did, too.) She was excellent to interview, she recalled reading the paper I work for when she was growing up, and I met her at a signing and she signed the advance copy she'd given me. Fortunately or unfortunately, her new book made interest in her first book spike to the point where it was unavailable at any of the libraries. I finally went out and bought it, and you know what, I'm glad I did.
I would like to arrange a virtual introduction somehow between her and another writer I admire, Lenore Skenazy, of the wonderful Free Range Kids blog. Gildiner was the ultimate free-range child in Lewiston in the 1950s. She was born to older parents, a welcome but unexpected surprise. When she was four, the doctor said she was hyper and needed a job, so she went to work at her father's pharmacy, keeping the place neat and helping to deliver medications.
Through her job at McClure's Pharmacy, she was exposed to many other worlds. She was the delivery man Roy's right hand man. He was the one with the driver's license, and she was the one with the ability to read, and together, they were unstoppable. They got to know Lewiston's former prostitute and abortion doctor, Marie Sweeney (and Cathy ruined her mother's bridge party by suggesting that one of her mother's friends should take her sick daughter to Sweeney). They went out to the Indian reservation regularly, and got to know the scary, violent Mad Bear, and the consequences of delivering his sedative too late.
The pharmacy wasn't her only world. She attended Catholic school, and battled the nuns constantly. She was a member of a neighborhood gang, the Bloods, where your membership renewed seasonally and if you could do scary stunts like swing out over the gorge, you were out. She writes a lot about her mom, who was a key member of the Lewiston Historical Society and knew the background of every building in town, who was a master bridge player and a participant in a women's study group where she wrote weekly research papers, but who had a maid and who never, ever cooked (Cathy was about 10 before she realized it was possible to make food at home).
Both of her books are wonderful. There's a lot of humor in them. Cathy was what one might term a trouble-maker, who stabbed a bully in the hand, who caused a wimpy kid to lose part of his fingers, and who also drink Shirley Temples in bars. There's a lot of sadness" I cried during the chapter on Warty, who ran the town dump and suffered from both Elephant Man disease and from ostracization, and at the part where Roy disappeared, never to be found or heard from again (I asked).
The books feel very real: Gildiner remembers well what it's like to be a kid and the sense of unfairness that often surrounds you, how well-meaning adults insult your intelligence and capabilities, how you're constantly smacking into the gaps in your own knowledge of the way the world works, the revelation that your parents and even your teachers don't have all the answers.
She'd hinted to me that she might write a third, and I genuinely hope she does. The first two are absolutely worth a read.
My co-worker had actually read her first memoir, Too Close to the Falls. Her sequel, After the Falls, came out in November, and that was when I talked to her. I knew I'd like her from the opening description of their move to a suburban subdivision (when I first became aware of subdivisions, I promised myself that if anyone tried to make me move to one, I wouldn't even take the time to argue, I would just run, as from any dangerous situation. I actually still feel the same way. Gildiner did, too.) She was excellent to interview, she recalled reading the paper I work for when she was growing up, and I met her at a signing and she signed the advance copy she'd given me. Fortunately or unfortunately, her new book made interest in her first book spike to the point where it was unavailable at any of the libraries. I finally went out and bought it, and you know what, I'm glad I did.
I would like to arrange a virtual introduction somehow between her and another writer I admire, Lenore Skenazy, of the wonderful Free Range Kids blog. Gildiner was the ultimate free-range child in Lewiston in the 1950s. She was born to older parents, a welcome but unexpected surprise. When she was four, the doctor said she was hyper and needed a job, so she went to work at her father's pharmacy, keeping the place neat and helping to deliver medications.
Through her job at McClure's Pharmacy, she was exposed to many other worlds. She was the delivery man Roy's right hand man. He was the one with the driver's license, and she was the one with the ability to read, and together, they were unstoppable. They got to know Lewiston's former prostitute and abortion doctor, Marie Sweeney (and Cathy ruined her mother's bridge party by suggesting that one of her mother's friends should take her sick daughter to Sweeney). They went out to the Indian reservation regularly, and got to know the scary, violent Mad Bear, and the consequences of delivering his sedative too late.
The pharmacy wasn't her only world. She attended Catholic school, and battled the nuns constantly. She was a member of a neighborhood gang, the Bloods, where your membership renewed seasonally and if you could do scary stunts like swing out over the gorge, you were out. She writes a lot about her mom, who was a key member of the Lewiston Historical Society and knew the background of every building in town, who was a master bridge player and a participant in a women's study group where she wrote weekly research papers, but who had a maid and who never, ever cooked (Cathy was about 10 before she realized it was possible to make food at home).
Both of her books are wonderful. There's a lot of humor in them. Cathy was what one might term a trouble-maker, who stabbed a bully in the hand, who caused a wimpy kid to lose part of his fingers, and who also drink Shirley Temples in bars. There's a lot of sadness" I cried during the chapter on Warty, who ran the town dump and suffered from both Elephant Man disease and from ostracization, and at the part where Roy disappeared, never to be found or heard from again (I asked).
The books feel very real: Gildiner remembers well what it's like to be a kid and the sense of unfairness that often surrounds you, how well-meaning adults insult your intelligence and capabilities, how you're constantly smacking into the gaps in your own knowledge of the way the world works, the revelation that your parents and even your teachers don't have all the answers.
She'd hinted to me that she might write a third, and I genuinely hope she does. The first two are absolutely worth a read.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
I am Hutterite
I'm posting tonight mostly because I want to, not because I've got anything earthshattering. I did finish one of the books from my last post, though: I Am Hutterite by Mary-Ann Kirkby.
Kirkby faced a dilemma in writing this book. She was raised in a Hutterite community until the age of 8, and wrote this book a couple of decades after her family left. She stayed in touch with her friends from the community, but the fact remains that she had at most four years of really solid memories to draw on, and had to get the rest from her family and Hutterite friends. And unfortunately, it kind of shows. With a couple of exceptions, the Hutterite portions read exactly as if the person writing them just asked around about community life. They're well-written and interesting, but they don't have that emotional depth and 'insider' feeling that the title and jacket of the book lead the reader to expect.
The central figure in the family's decision to leave is also ambiguous. In some chapters, he's a tyrant: the horrible man who gave them a hard time about seeking asthma care for one of their children and deliberately withheld crucial information about the health of a different child, leading to its death. In other chapters, though, he's an intelligent, respected leader, beloved by everyone, who has the author over for Christmas Eve and is good with children. But the conflict there is never really explored.
When I fail to connect with a book, I often blame myself, and this time is no exception. I read the short book over a period of about two weeks, a handful of pages here, a page there, a chapter before bed: who can connect with anything read in that manner? Yet: the book also didn't reach out and grab me, the way After the Falls by Catherine Gildiner and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers did. With those books, all I wanted to do was read them, yet I never wanted to reach the end. This one didn't do that for me.
Kirkby faced a dilemma in writing this book. She was raised in a Hutterite community until the age of 8, and wrote this book a couple of decades after her family left. She stayed in touch with her friends from the community, but the fact remains that she had at most four years of really solid memories to draw on, and had to get the rest from her family and Hutterite friends. And unfortunately, it kind of shows. With a couple of exceptions, the Hutterite portions read exactly as if the person writing them just asked around about community life. They're well-written and interesting, but they don't have that emotional depth and 'insider' feeling that the title and jacket of the book lead the reader to expect.
The central figure in the family's decision to leave is also ambiguous. In some chapters, he's a tyrant: the horrible man who gave them a hard time about seeking asthma care for one of their children and deliberately withheld crucial information about the health of a different child, leading to its death. In other chapters, though, he's an intelligent, respected leader, beloved by everyone, who has the author over for Christmas Eve and is good with children. But the conflict there is never really explored.
When I fail to connect with a book, I often blame myself, and this time is no exception. I read the short book over a period of about two weeks, a handful of pages here, a page there, a chapter before bed: who can connect with anything read in that manner? Yet: the book also didn't reach out and grab me, the way After the Falls by Catherine Gildiner and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers did. With those books, all I wanted to do was read them, yet I never wanted to reach the end. This one didn't do that for me.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
World of Warcrack
When I first saw Ryan VanCleeve's Unplugged at the library, I was pissed. I think I might have even kicked the shelf. I didn't look at the book too closely, I just noted the subject matter, saw it was similar to the book I've sort of been planning to write, and saw red. Good thing I did the next step, which was to actually take it home and read it. Because it's actually not similar at all to the one I want to write, in fact, it sort of gets to why I want to write it.
And therein lies my dilemma in blogging about this book. The book was well-written and absorbing, funny in some parts, heartbreaking in many others, with a very vivid voice. But it also bothers me, because books like Unplugged, chronicling the author's descent into gaming addiction, are the predominant image of people who play online games. It was months before I told my co-workers that I liked to play WoW, and when I did, the first thing they asked is if I was one of those addicts. Positive stories about the game are very, very rare in most media.
Probably the best known is that of Ephoenix. Ephoenix was a character created by a young boy and his father when the boy was very ill with cancer. Between all the treatments, gaming was one of the few things he was still capable of doing. His Make-a-Wish was to visit the Blizzard studios in California. They created a special epic weapon just for him and allowed him to design a quest, which is still in game. (The quest in the tauren starting area where you have to help the farmer find his dog.) Beyond that, though, you never hear the smaller stories about people who fall in love through the game (well, unless one of them is a minor), the people who are disabled or live in the middle of nowhere and have no other way to socialize, and just the people who build strong friendships through the game.
But anyway, the book isn't about that, although to Van Cleeve's credit, he does touch on some of the more positive aspects near the end. It's basically a memoir of his life as first a casual gamer, and then as a true addict, who did 24-hour marathon sessions and neglected his family to play. Interestingly, Van Cleeve doesn't feel that gaming addiction gets enough attention, or is taken seriously enough. I think it's just hard for people to tell the difference.
If you come home from work every day, log right in for 3 hours, then spend the rest of the night puttering around, I think I'm right in saying that's not an addict, anymore than someone who watches TV or reads for those 3 hours is an addict. If you play into the wee morning hours, call off work with gaming hangovers, get the shakes when you can't play, sneak away during your kid's birthday party or your anniversary with your husband to raid, dream about WoW when you're asleep, think about it constantly while you're awake -- that's an addict. That was Van Cleeve.
I don't know how much this book will interest non-gamers, but as a gamer, there's definitely a lot of stuff to think about. I like how he talked to different people about why they responded to the game, and how he analyzed it himself. I honestly have to agree: the best thing about WoW is that, unlike the real world, it never disappoints. The work you put in is rewarded, every time. Work towards raising your reputation with a faction, and you hit exalted, every time. Work towards completing every raid, you'll do it. In The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, the main character observes the woman in her house knitting, embroidering, doing some sort of craft, and comments on how good it is to have small goals that are easily achieved. When you break it down, that's what the game is.
Out in real life, you can work extremely hard and do well and still not get promoted. You can put in a lot of years at a job and suddenly lose your position to budget cuts or outsourcing or any myraid of things. You can work really hard at a marriage, and your spouse will get bored and cheat. You can try for years to have a baby and not be successful. It's nice to have a break from all that murky, messy uncertainty. It's also easy to see how someone could never want to leave.
And therein lies my dilemma in blogging about this book. The book was well-written and absorbing, funny in some parts, heartbreaking in many others, with a very vivid voice. But it also bothers me, because books like Unplugged, chronicling the author's descent into gaming addiction, are the predominant image of people who play online games. It was months before I told my co-workers that I liked to play WoW, and when I did, the first thing they asked is if I was one of those addicts. Positive stories about the game are very, very rare in most media.
Probably the best known is that of Ephoenix. Ephoenix was a character created by a young boy and his father when the boy was very ill with cancer. Between all the treatments, gaming was one of the few things he was still capable of doing. His Make-a-Wish was to visit the Blizzard studios in California. They created a special epic weapon just for him and allowed him to design a quest, which is still in game. (The quest in the tauren starting area where you have to help the farmer find his dog.) Beyond that, though, you never hear the smaller stories about people who fall in love through the game (well, unless one of them is a minor), the people who are disabled or live in the middle of nowhere and have no other way to socialize, and just the people who build strong friendships through the game.
But anyway, the book isn't about that, although to Van Cleeve's credit, he does touch on some of the more positive aspects near the end. It's basically a memoir of his life as first a casual gamer, and then as a true addict, who did 24-hour marathon sessions and neglected his family to play. Interestingly, Van Cleeve doesn't feel that gaming addiction gets enough attention, or is taken seriously enough. I think it's just hard for people to tell the difference.
If you come home from work every day, log right in for 3 hours, then spend the rest of the night puttering around, I think I'm right in saying that's not an addict, anymore than someone who watches TV or reads for those 3 hours is an addict. If you play into the wee morning hours, call off work with gaming hangovers, get the shakes when you can't play, sneak away during your kid's birthday party or your anniversary with your husband to raid, dream about WoW when you're asleep, think about it constantly while you're awake -- that's an addict. That was Van Cleeve.
I don't know how much this book will interest non-gamers, but as a gamer, there's definitely a lot of stuff to think about. I like how he talked to different people about why they responded to the game, and how he analyzed it himself. I honestly have to agree: the best thing about WoW is that, unlike the real world, it never disappoints. The work you put in is rewarded, every time. Work towards raising your reputation with a faction, and you hit exalted, every time. Work towards completing every raid, you'll do it. In The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, the main character observes the woman in her house knitting, embroidering, doing some sort of craft, and comments on how good it is to have small goals that are easily achieved. When you break it down, that's what the game is.
Out in real life, you can work extremely hard and do well and still not get promoted. You can put in a lot of years at a job and suddenly lose your position to budget cuts or outsourcing or any myraid of things. You can work really hard at a marriage, and your spouse will get bored and cheat. You can try for years to have a baby and not be successful. It's nice to have a break from all that murky, messy uncertainty. It's also easy to see how someone could never want to leave.
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