Generations
A Century of Women Speak about Their Lives
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
“This is the first book to show the sweeping change among American women in this century, and to do so in an irresistible, intimate, and popular way.” —Gloria Steinem
The women in this landmark work of oral history are from diverse ethnic, geographic, and social backgrounds, and they tell stories about all aspects of their lives, from their professional and romantic experiences to sex discrimination and their own realized or unrealized aspirations.
As in the best oral history, the stories these women candidly tell are vivid and often poignantly detailed. We hear accounts of rural, chore-filled childhoods at the beginning of the century, of contemporary teens without curfews, of dates that began with a chat with father in the parlor, of the sexual liberation of the 1960s, of women who worked in factories during World War II, of those who were pioneers in their professions, and of women who today struggle heroically to balance the demands of marriage or single mothering, work, and children.
Sweeping in scope, and yet rooted in the details, emotions, and dilemmas of everyday life, the journey women have traveled over the century here becomes all the more dramatic, the transformation they have undergone all the more remarkable. Generations is a celebration of this transformation in all its complexity, an embracing and vibrant family scrapbook that belongs to all American women.
“Generations tells us both how far we have come and how far we have yet to go.” —Ruth Sidel, author of Unsung Heroines: Single Mothers and the American Dream
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Compiled by a mother-and-daughter team, this gathering of original interviews with women, spanning three generations and representing a wide array of ethnicities, classes, locations and lifestyles, constitutes a vivid oral history of contemporary women in America. The topics addressed in these firsthand accounts range from corsets and bra-burnings to WWII factory jobs, supermom heroics and practically everything else. Vast in scope and inherently overwhelming, the book nevertheless achieves its aim--to "make more nuanced our understanding of the journey women have taken over the century," as Miedzian (Boys Will Be Boys: Breaking the Link Between Masculinity and Violence) puts it in her introduction. Malinovich is a recent graduate of Brown University. Unfortunately, the book's structure diminishes its impact. The three main sections ("Growing Up," "Family" and "Work") are divided by generation (women born from 1900 to the early 1930s, early 1930s to mid-'50s and mid-'50s to mid-'70s) and then into chapters comprised of interview segments grouped together for reasons that are unclear and with often uninspired titles, such as "It was 1960," "We Split Up" and "I Have Done a Lot of Volunteer Work." As a result, individual accounts are scattered, drastically minimizing the impact and clarity of stories from 150 women.