Bright Precious Thing
Reflections on a Life Shaped by Feminism
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Let’s Take the Long Way Home comes a moving memoir about how the women’s movement revolutionized and saved her life, from the 1960s to the Me Too era.
In a voice as candid as it is evocative, Gail Caldwell traces a path from her west Texas girlhood through her emergence as a young daredevil, then as a feminist—a journey that reflected seismic shifts in the culture itself. Caldwell’s travels took her to California and Mexico and dark country roads, and the dangers she encountered were rivaled only by the personal demons she faced. Bright Precious Thing is the captivating story of a woman’s odyssey, her search for adventure giving way to something more profound: the evolution of a writer and a woman, a struggle to embrace one’s life as a precious thing.
Told against a contrasting backdrop of the present day, including the author’s friendship with a young neighborhood girl, Bright Precious Thing unfolds with the same heart and narrative grace of Caldwell’s Let’s Take the Long Way Home, called “a lovely gift to readers” by The Washington Post. Bright Precious Thing is a book about finding, then protecting, what we cherish most.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pulitzer Prize winning critic Caldwell (New Life, No Instructions), formerly of the Boston Globe, shares snippets from her life in an empowering nonlinear memoir about feminism; losing a best friend to cancer; suffering sexual assault and harassment; and loving her dogs. The decade-hopping narrative is framed by Caldwell's relationship with Tyler, her neighbor's five-year-old daughter who often stops by Caldwell's place to chat. Caldwell, who never married or had kids, discusses finding strength in the women's movement in the 1970s, forging sisterly bonds in the fight for equality, and, more recently, contending with the Trump presidency. "I am an educated, self-sufficient feminist," she writes. "I am Donald Trump's worst nightmare." As she did in her memoir Let's Take the Long Way Home, Caldwell honors her friendship with late author Caroline Knapp, a fellow ex-drinker "who might have been my twin." The book's most arresting sections are about the sexual trauma and harassment that Caldwell has experienced, including being raped as a teenager. Throughout, Caldwell celebrates female resilience and basks in her love of her pet Samoyeds. This pleasant if slight entry works best as a companion to Caldwell's previous memoirs.
