Last week, I began this four-part series exploring the books my daughter will read in her U.S. Womens History course at the University of Maine, Farmington. Today, inContext focuses on two texts: COMING OF AGE IN MISSISSIPPI by Anne Moody and GIRLS LIKE US by Sheila Weller. I’ll deal with the latter first.
IN GIRLS LIKE US: CAROLE KING, JONI MITCHELL, CARLY SIMON—AND THE JOURNEY OF A GENERATION, the author, Sheila Weller, promises to show us how each of these performing artists and song writers broke barriers for women and represent the coming-of-age of women in the 1960s. Frankly, the writing did not captivate me, seemed sporadic and disconnected and I felt as though Weller never got to the point. It was frustrating to read about songs and not have them quoted when the lyrics were tantamount to what was being discussed. Either the author assumed every reader would already know each woman’s catalog by heart, or she didn’t get permission to use the songs themselves. If the latter is the case, Weller might have mentioned this to ease the frustration of the reader. Additionally, there’s not much in the way of information directly from King, Mitchell or Simon.
All of the above said, I am familiar with some of the songs of each woman discussed inGIRLS LIKE US, and I see how each made her own contribution to paving the way for women in music, especially for the time in history in which each woman came of age and found her greatest success. I appreciate that Carole King had her children in tow as she went about writing lasting songs that spoke from and to her generation as well as those subsequent to her time. Joni Mitchell’s child born and given for adoption is surely a sign of the times. Finally, Carly Simon’s spurring of convention as an autonomous sexual person and also caretaking of her addicted husband, James Taylor, speak volumes. Unfortunately, I did not glean from Weller her ideas about the significance of each woman about whom she wrote. I did not get a sense of what Weller felt were their contributions. And, if the music industry today is any indication of the path paved by King, Mitchell and Simon, we see it is one strewn with carcasses lined by bushes more full of thorns than roses. (Of course I don’t fault any of the artists in the book with the condition of the music world for women. It’s just interesting to consider Weller’s view of them and their influence.)
COMING OF AGE IN MISSISSIPPI by Anne Moody depicts a wholly different experience and journey of a woman who lived in the 1960s. Rather than worry about whether someone would still love her tomorrow (paraphrasing the Carole King lyric), Anne Moody had to worry about whether she’d eat or even be alive to feel hunger the next morning. We see a black woman who shares her lived experience of the violence that took place over civil rights issues in the south. Moody’s history makes something like the treatment of blacks in a book like THE HELP seem not only mild, but also downright optimistic.
Some online reviewers doubt Moody’s story, such as her being left to care for an infant sibling before she herself was even school age, or her walking to school alone at age five. These detractors have obviously never read slave narratives. Children as young as five were put in charge of their white owners’ babies, and children as young as five were also ironing and cooking. It seems absurd to our notions today of what a five-year-old should have access to—a hot stove or iron—yet we’d be amazed not only at slave narratives, but also the life of any child before mandated education in our country, for example.
Moody writes about her mother working right through her pregnancies and immediately after delivering babies. When people comment on a CEO today taking just three weeks off for maternity leave, they are often judgmental because one would think a woman of means would have the option of taking more time. Poverty has always forced women to work, regardless of their health or that of their children. When white writers today complain about the dearth of eligible men for marriage, consider the plight of black men throughout history up to and including today and the availability of men to be breadwinners, husbands and fathers in the 1960s. That there existed a great divide between the north and south from the late 1850s through to today’s political divisions is a point driven home by the experiences of blacks living in Chicago versus any town or city in Mississippi.
While I’ve had occasion to be concerned for my bodily safety due to an attempted kidnapping in my early teens, I have never felt the same concern for my well-being as many blacks faced during the civil rights movement, or still face today in some areas of the U.S. It is humbling to consider that people feared being shot just for registering to vote, for example, or for even being seen with activists attempting to help them register to vote. Even within the violence suffered by those who initiated the suffrage movement, I do not believe that anyone has felt or feels the same mortal fear as that of blacks in Mississippi or Alabama, as examples, during the civil rights era. For an unforgettable rendering of such an eventful time, COMING OF AGE IN MISSISSIPPI provides a first-person account that will leave you thinking long and hard about racism and the effects of poverty.
Next week, in Part 3 of U.S. Women’s History, we’ll look at THE TRIANGLE FIRE and TITLE IX.
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