Women's America: Refocusing the Past Book Review

First published September 13, 2012 at http://www.hercircleezine.com/2012/09/13/september-6-2012/

Last weekend, my husband and I dropped our daughter off at the University of Maine, Farmington for her first semester of college. Of course, such a transition is fraught with conflicting emotions. Part of me as a mother fears every possible and unlikely fate that might befall a young woman in her first year of college. Another part of me is happy to have her out of the house, and many parents of teenagers might understand that part all too well themselves. What I’m excited about is that my daughter, who wrote her college essay about how she does not identify as a feminist, but rather a humanist (which she equates with egalitarian thought), will take HTY 246S U.S. Women’s History this fall. The course description states that the class will cover the political, social, economic and cultural aspects of history related to women. It will explore movements for women’s rights, women and work, differences between women of varied class, race and ethnicity along with women’s roles within family and community and the evolving nature of gender. It is my great hope that my daughter embraces feminism and comes to see it as the impetus for her egalitarian humanism.

My reason for sharing this information is to explore the six books required for my daughter’s course as subjects for inContext for a four-part series. The books we’ll look at include the following: COMING OF AGE IN MISSISSIPPI by Anne Moody, GIRLS LIKE US: CAROLE KING, JONI MITCHELL, CARLY SIMON—AND THE JOURNEY OF A GENERATION by Sheila Weller, ODD GIRL OUT by Ann Bannon, WOMEN’S AMERICA: REFOCUSING THE PAST by Linda K. Kerber, Jane Sherron De Hart and Cornelia Hughes Dayton, and two Bedford Series in History and Culture books, THE TRIANGLE FIRE by Jo Ann E. Argersinger and TITLE IX by Susan Ware.

The most comprehensive book, WOMEN’S AMERICA: REFOCUSING THE PAST includes excerpts from women’s history articles and texts along with documents that support each. Each period of United States history, from early settlements in the 1600s through industrialization and the frontier, to modern times is covered in this way. One excerpt fascinated me due to my recently acquired knowledge that Thomas Jefferson’s wife and his slave and lover Sally Hemmings shared the same father. The excerpt is from THE HEMMINGSES OF MONTICELLO: AN AMERICAN FAMILY by Annette Gordon-Reed. I have known for some time that Sally Hemmings, a slave in the Jefferson household, and Thomas Jefferson had a relationship. What I was not aware of was that Ms. Hemmings and Martha (Wayles) Jefferson shared the same father.

In reading the excerpt from Gordon-Reed’s book, I also learned about a relationship between Sally’s older sister, Mary Hemmings, and a merchant Thomas Bell. At one point, Jefferson hired Mary out to Bell on lease. When Jefferson returned from Paris, Mary Hemmings requested that she be sold to Bell, as she wished to live with him and their children. Jefferson complied with the request. It seems evident that in both the relationship between Thomas Bell and Mary and Thomas Jefferson and Sally, affection was mutual, and the relationship was not merely the keeping of a concubine by a slave owner. Of course, Gordon-Reed points out that we cannot know what the thoughts of any of these persons were since no record exists of their private thoughts.

Lest you think all of the articles are serious and scholarly, there’s an essay by Patricia Mainardi (taken from an anthology, SISTERHOOD IS POWERFUL: AN ANTHOLOGY OF WRITINGS FROM THE WOMEN’S LIBERATION MOVEMENT, edited by Robin Morgan) about housework that is fabulous. It made me laugh and cringe at the same time. Even in my egalitarian marriage, there are a few little things about the division of labor that irk my husband and me. For example, because he doesn’t wish to perform some tasks, like letter writing, that is my job. And, while I’m capable of taking care of insects that find their way into our house now and again, I don’t hesitate, on principle, to make him get out of bed to handle a spider before I get in the shower.

Next week, we’ll look at the experience of another generation of women of color through Anne Moody’s COMING OF AGE IN MISSISSIPPI. We’ll also see how women fared in the 1970s in the world of music through GIRLS LIKE US by Sheila Weller.