Tag Archives: womens history

The Invention of Wings, by Sue Monk Kidd*****

Posted on by

theinventionofwingsTwo of today’s hottest political topics have to do with equality. As we follow and sometimes participate in the Black Lives Matter movement, along with the fight to keep Planned Parenthood funded and maintain a woman’s right to own her body and say what happens to it, this elegantly crafted work of historical fiction could not, strangely enough, be more timely. The Invention of Wings is a fictional biography of Sarah and Angelina Grimke, abolitionists and feminists, the first to make screaming headlines by speaking out publicly decades before women would see the right to vote, and decades before the first shots of the American Civil War were fired. As is essential in dealing with the rights of then-enslaved African-Americans in the south, Kidd adds an additional character, a slave named Hetty, written alternately with the Sarah’s story. I say it is essential to do so; this is because it is wrong to write about the marginalization and subjugation of an entire people, and then not include a representative of that group into the plot. As usual, Kidd doesn’t disappoint.

Much as I love historical fiction, one thing that makes me a little crazy is wondering where the research ends and fiction commences. In her afterword, the author lets us know specifically what is true and what isn’t. She even gives us a brief bibliography to pursue if we feel moved to do so; the only other historical fiction writer I know of that does this is Laurence Yep, my hands-down favorite YA author. Thus, Kidd places herself in outstanding company.

The Grimke sisters were born into the elite planter class, a tiny minority among Caucasians in the South, and in the very belly of the beast: Charleston, South Carolina. Partially because of the tremendous brutality meted out to the plantation’s slaves right before her tiny eyes there at home, Sarah Grimke grew up opposed to slavery. As a much older sister, she had a formative role helping her mother raise Angelina, who also became a fierce, uncompromising abolitionist.

It is one thing to take up a cause that is small but in which one has a support base. For the Grimkes, there was nothing. Eventually both had to move north for their own safety. And although, as a history major and a feminist of the 1970’s I had read about the Grimke sisters many times, it is within the well-crafted, deeply thoughtful, well researched pages of this novel that they first came to life for me.

Hetty, the slave depicted within these pages, actually existed, but the story Kidd writes for her is entirely fictional. The real Hetty died before Sarah was grown. Still, her character felt as real to me, and was easily as well developed as either of the Grimke sisters. Hetty is not passive, not waiting to be “set” free. She understands that the only freedom she is likely to receive will be what she can do for herself. A nice touch Kidd adds is in making Hetty one of the children of Denmark Vesey, the free African-American that attempted to organize and lead a slave revolt.

Everything here is carefully constructed and absorbing. Kidd has long demonstrated formidable talent in constructing well developed characters and vivid settings; the difference here (as opposed to The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid’s Chair, the two others of hers I have read) is the research involved. As with everything else, she blends fact and detail into a well spun tale.

I should add here that the literacy level required to deal with this text is higher than most. Don’t toss it out there for your average middle schooler to read, because it will prove too difficult. Because of the way she builds her story, brick by brick, the pace doesn’t really pick up until about halfway into the book. This isn’t a rip-roaring page turner; it’s a series of quiet nights by the fire, or curled up on your favorite window seat, or by the side of your bed. Give it the time it deserves.
Though I got my copy from the Seattle Public Library, I consider this title worth the cover price. Highly recommended.

The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel: A Story of Marriage and Money in the Early Republic***

Posted on by

theremarkableriseofelizajumelEliza was born in a brothel, but over the course of her lifetime became a very wealthy woman who took substantial joy in rubbing shoulders with the bourgeoisie in the USA, and in getting as close as she possibly could to the royal family in France. This scholarly biography is her story. Thank you to Net Galley and Chicago Review Press for the DRC. The book will be for sale November 1.
Eliza Bowen moved to New York at an early age and shed her last name and identity, realizing that socially and economically, she had nowhere to go but up. Her ambition was limitless, and her intentions entirely fixed upon her own well being. She married Stephan Jumel, a wealthy Frenchman living in the USA, and set to work spending his fortune. No home was too grand for her tastes, and once she had the place, she set to work making improvements beyond ordinary repairs and redecoration. Her husband trusted her business acumen sufficiently to put real estate in her name in some instances, and this was nearly unheard of during the period in which they lived.
When the Jacobins and Napoleon had been defeated and the Bourbons were back on the throne, Jumel wanted to go home and stay there. His wife had other plans. After his death, she married the notorious former vice-president Aaron Burr. The marriage was short-lived, and they divorced after only about a year of marriage.
The documentation and research Oppenheimer has done is excellent, once her story really gets rolling. The initial ten percent or so, during which Eliza’s predecessors and early life are covered, is almost entirely surmise, and so we constantly read “might have”, “probably”, and finally, “…we can only speculate.” Given the opportunity, I would edit that out completely. The story stands without it, and so it really is unnecessary filler. My recommendation to the reader is to skim up to the point where she meets and marries Jumel.
Eliza Jumel is not an appealing individual, and since the nature of Oppenheimer’s narrative is expository, she makes no excuses for Eliza’s avaricious and sometimes unprincipled behavior. The woman was more than a survivor; she was a predator. But Oppenheimer has been thorough in providing us with a picture of her climb, financially and socially, and she is meticulous both with details and documentation.
Jumel’s life story isn’t a particularly enjoyable read, but for particular aspects of research, mostly topics steeped in women’s history within the US, it is a very useful resource. Scholarly and well documented, students of women’s history in the US will benefit from it.

My Life on the Road, by Gloria Steinem*****

Posted on by

 

mylifeontheroadI’ve been thinking a lot about Steinem since the recent unfortunate episode on a TV talk show. I was heartsick. What woman gets past 80 without a single regrettable senior moment? But most of us will be fortunate enough to have a spouse, partner, adult child, or other companion who will take us aside and suggest we rethink what we’re doing or saying. “Mom, I’m getting a little worried. Can we check your meds? What do you think?”

But Steinem doesn’t have that sort of support system. The women that were closest to her for a long, long time are already dead.

So I republish this blog post asking you to think, not about the single magic moment, for which she later apologized, but instead, for all the amazing accomplishments and selfless deeds she has done on behalf of women, and for her willingness in a time when most of white America kept to itself, to learn at the feet of women of color.

Because this is her legacy; her real one.

Feminist heroes are everywhere, but if I had to name half a dozen women that were at the core of the feminist movement that followed closely on the heels of the Civil Rights movement and the movement to end the US war in Vietnam, Steinem’s name would be among them. In fact, hers might be the first name out of my mouth. It was she who coined the salutation “Ms”, and who founded Ms. Magazine. When I saw she had written a memoir, I knew I had to have it, and when Net Galley and Random House gave me the DRC, I was delighted. But this is one of the few books that if I’d had to, I’d have been willing to pay full jacket price in order to read. Heroes are thin on the ground these days, and we treasure those that still walk among us.

My reading records reflect over 300 biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs I’ve read, and I didn’t even start listing them until about 3 years ago, so who knows how many? The one thing I know to expect, when someone really famous sits down to tell us about her life, is that the ego will be there. It might be veiled, especially if the person is famous for writing as opposed to something else, or it might be big and bold. Once in awhile it’s been so bald-faced that I came away wishing I hadn’t read the book so I could go on liking the author. So for one of the most famous of living feminists, I was braced and ready.

And this icon’s ego isn’t there. I don’t mean she hides it well; I just don’t find it. And it appears as if large amounts of time spent among Native sisters in struggle—Wilma Mankiller foremost among them—taught her so much about focusing on the circle, rather than a table that has someone at its head, a big-boss type, that she let go of whatever ego she might have been thinking about building. For example, when she works as an organizer, she dreads public speaking, but looks forward to the place at which one part of the auditorium begins to answer the questions from another part, and she knows a circle has formed, one in which she becomes just another person present. I was blown away!

Steinem began her career in journalism, and she is one of the finest writers whose work I have read. For a brief time in years gone by, I dismissed her because of her sometimes-attachment to Democratic party candidates, but the sum of her contributions has been so much more that I missed the forest for the trees during that time of my life. Now I want to read everything she ever wrote.

Travel is a great metaphor, but it’s also a material fact for Steinem. She grew up with a father who was a traveling salesman, and unlike most such men, he took his family with him. For most of her childhood, there was no home, merely a series of stop-overs. This rootless existence would leave some children traumatized. Kids thrive on routine, and not all would be able to translate constant travel into a sense of the usual. But Steinem mostly remembers it as a positive attribute, and credits her parents for their capacity to question social norms during a time most Americans were madly conforming. The fact that she continued to live out of a suitcase once she was grown and on her own is the greatest testament of all to her upbringing, and to her response to it.

There are oh, so many stories, some of which made me laugh out loud, and others that made me think. You can go winnow those out for yourself. And of course, my favorites may not be yours.

But the one thing I can promise you is a really great read, one with depth, yet not difficult to access. It’s friendly and feels as if we are having coffee with an old, dear friend, right at the table with one another. A circular table.

You have to read this book. It will be for sale October 27.

Lucy Stone: An Unapologetic Life, by Sally McMillen ****

Posted on by
lucystonealifeThis well-documented, balanced yet sympathetic biography serves to advocate for the inclusion of Lucy Stone among the statues of great Americans at the Capitol rotunda in Washington DC. Currently there is a suffragist statue that includes Stanton, Cady, and Mott. McMillen makes a strong case that Stone should be there as well.

Thank you to Oxford and Net Galley for the ARC. The book will be available at the end of January.

The history of the American feminist movement is a cause near and dear to this reviewer’s heart. I have studied it, taught it, and lived it. I have marched on that Capitol numerous times in defense of the right of women’s reproductive freedom, despite the fact that most of my life has been on the West Coast of the USA, and that is one long ride. And so, having recently veered out of my historical comfort zone, here I found myself right back in it. And most of the information in this book, while useful, is not new to me.

The reader should know that although there is extraneous material that ought to be edited out, it is all at the beginning of the book. If you are interested in the history of the suffrage movement and/or American feminist history in general, get a copy of this book, and don’t be discouraged by the initial ten percent. It does get better. It probably won’t change the statues in DC., but regardless, what McMillen imparts here is (for the last 90%)thorough, well documented, scholarly, and unflinching when less attractive issues arrive (such as the race-baiting, anti-immigrant speech-making, and the squabbling after the split in the organization occurred).

Stone was a remarkable woman, strong, charismatic, and imbued with many ideas that were well ahead of her time. Unlike most of the women who participated in and lead the women’s movement of the nineteenth century, her own origins were not petit bourgeois, or middle class. She was born into a farm family that struggled financially, and still she attended Oberlin College, the first in the nation to accept women and permit them to attend college with men. Her education was not a gift doled out from parental largesse; she taught school in order to pay her way. (Her father relented when she was a senior and paid for the last year).There were a number of restrictions on women there that seem ridiculous now and that Stone fought against and sometimes won. Her steely determination, keen intelligence, and personal magnetism led her to be the first woman to enter the then-popular public speaking circuit.

In these days before the American Civil War and after the Industrial Revolution, there was of course no media beyond the printed word. Many people were hungry for new information and ideas, but books were very expensive and newspapers, though plentiful, were often incorrect and for many, insufficient. (This paragraph is not in the book; this is me speaking.) So it isn’t really surprising that those who had the time and the means would turn up to hear speakers on important issues of the day.

Many were shocked, McMillen tells us, to hear that a woman, a single, unescorted woman, had taken this path. Stone was considered a radical, but her musical, sweet-sounding voice and her petite countenance, which she deliberately dressed in black silk and lace to take off the edge, took many off guard, and newspaper reviews were often quite favorable. Over the course of time she became famous. She proposed things suggested by no one else, such as the advantage of a woman’s remaining single so that she could keep her own money and property rather than to turn it all over to her husband, as the law required should she wed. Further, she suggested, the law ought to be changed so that such a choice need not be necessary.

Later she met Susan B Anthony, and the two were, for a time, close friends, addressing one another by their first names at a time when only the most intimate of acquaintances did so. And just as their political agreement formed the basis for what appeared to be an unshakeable friendship, so it would later cause a rift, not only personally, but in the movement itself.

For those interested in women’s history, American history, contemporary history, or Stone herself, consider this a must-read. Skim through the extraneous bits at the beginning and once the narrative truly takes wing, it will keep your attention.

Tara Revisited: Women, War, and the Plantation Legend by Catherine Clinton *****

Posted on by
 tararevisited First of all, if you are planning to visit Georgia with your family, don’t ask the tourist bureau to help you find Tara! It isn’t there. Neither is Scarlett or Mammy. They’re all fictional.

Thank you; I feel much better having cleared the air. But nobody can make it clearer than author Catherine Clinton, who bursts the myth of the antebellum belle and her loyal house-slaves better with greater heat and light than I have ever seen done by any one historian before. In a time of increasing apology and revisionism that makes the American Civil War seem to have been merely a dreadful misunderstanding, and that decreases the social and material weight of the slaves it freed, Clinton’s historical smack back to reality makes me want to stand up and cheer! And also to thank Net Galley and Abbeville Press for the ARC.

Clinton focuses primarily on Southern women, but she takes just about all of the myths of the “Lost Cause” and puts them through the shredder, introducing them and their origins, and in a manner meticulous but never, ever dull, demonstrates why each of them is incorrect. She doesn’t pussyfoot or hesitate to call bigotry by its name, but the tone is of the compelling storyteller rather than that of the lecturer. In a day when Caucasian Americans sometimes carelessly discard the complaints of people of color as “playing the race card” without first examining to see whether it has in fact been called out righteously, this succinct yet thorough narrative is refreshing, as if someone has opened the windows and let some of the cobwebs sweep away.

Clinton uses the voices of Southern women, both Caucasian and Black, and recognizes that there is a dearth of the latter, but she has turned over every possible rock and ferreted out every last resource in the back stacks of government libraries dating clear back to the WPA to access what is available. She also quotes Mary Chesnut, a Caucasian Southerner whose diary is a mainstay of Civil War historians, enough and in enough interesting ways to make me want to go dig up my own copy, which bored me to tears the first two times I tried to slog through it. Filtered through Clinton’s prose, it is a lively and interesting vantage point. And she quotes WEB DuBois, one of my greatest heroes.

There is one area where most US historians dislike to tread (or are perhaps unaware), and I read on with interest (this being the field in which I taught for many years) to see whether she would go there. She did. Not many American historians can bring themselves to discuss the deepest Southern shame (and by extension, America’s for having accommodated it so long) of slave breeding, a practice done in no other part of the world. In a time in which slavery was dying out across Europe, US border states, which had difficulty growing crops year ‘round to sustain the (minimal but still existent) expenses incurred by slaves, had turned to trafficking in human flesh, going so far as to select who should sleep with whom out in the quarters so that they would have the best possible product to sell once the progeny was born and weaned. Clinton does not use the word “breeding”, but she does describe it accurately.

She also points out that actually, most white Southern women did not lead the lives of idle privilege that the cinema would have us believe; though their lives were many times better than that of slaves, they had a large household to manage without the labor saving devices technology would bring. And of course, most white households were not those of planters. She discusses the various social crumbs that were dropped for less affluent whites by the aristocracy in order to keep them from crossing the color line in solidarity with other toilers.

I usually must abbreviate my reviews for fear I will give away all the meaty parts of a book and leave the reader no real purpose in checking it out personally. There is no danger of that here. This narrative is so deftly and expertly crafted that I found myself bookmarking more than half of its pages, because so many had a salient fact, interesting quote, or well-turned interpretation. I constantly found myself thinking, “Yes!”

When Clinton mentioned the Southern fear of “miscegenation”, or racial intermarriage, this reviewer could not help a small intake of breath, given that in other times, I would be deemed guilty and my husband would likely be dead.

If you have any interest whatsoever in the American Civil War, you need this book. If women’s history is of interest to you, get this book.

If you care about issues of race in the United States, there are two recently published books that should adorn your shelves and be next-read if you have not done so: this book is one, and Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns. In a sense, Wilkerson picks up where (chronologically) Clinton leaves off. And if you have already read Wilkerson, you still need to read Clinton.

What are you waiting for? Get out your credit card and order the book. You won’t be sorry.