I first heard of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's latest work on the Diane Rehm Show back in November. (You can listen to the audio of the interview here). I was vaguely familiar with her name, due mostly to her involvement with the founding of the Exponent II women's group in Boston in the 70's and her status of one of mormondom's academic elite, but had never read any of her work. I bought the book before we left the states and finally read it. It's a quick and easy read. I highly recommend it.
The book provides a brief overview of feminism and the emergence of women's history during second wave feminism. She achieves this in such an accessible and interesting way, that this book is a joy to read. She provides some very acute, insightful and often inspiring analysis along the way. She emphasizes the role that each of us have to play in this history, in creating meaning of lives past, because "History is not just what happened in the past. It is what later generations choose to remember." I now feel a real sense of urgency, particularly with my Grandpa's passing, to uncover the stories of the well-behaved women in my family's history.
Here's a more complete review from Publishers Weekly:
In 1976, graduate student Ulrich asserted in an obscure scholarly article that well-behaved women seldom make history. But Ulrich, now at Harvard, made history, winning the Pulitzer and the Bancroft Prizes for A Midwife's Tale—and her slogan did, too: it began popping up on T-shirts, greeting cards and buttons. Why the appeal, Ulrich wondered? And what makes a woman qualify as well-behaved or rebellious? Several chapters of this accessible and beautifully written study are brilliant. In one, Ulrich follows the lead of Virginia Woolf (who invented an ill-fated fictional sister of Shakespeare) by digging into what we know—and don't know—about the women in the Bard's family. In another, she offers a piercing analysis of four 19th-century Harriets—ex-slaves Tubman, Jacobs and Powell, and novelist Stowe—to uncover the interplay of race and gender in questions of liberation. And in a third, richly illustrated chapter, she utilizes a medieval book of days as a window into women's labor through the ages. If other chapters, such as a wide-ranging exploration of the Amazon myth and a rumination on second-wave feminism, don't cohere as tightly or showcase Ulrich's strengths as an extraordinary interpreter of ordinary records, this can be forgiven in a work that is so often sharp and insightful.
The book provides a brief overview of feminism and the emergence of women's history during second wave feminism. She achieves this in such an accessible and interesting way, that this book is a joy to read. She provides some very acute, insightful and often inspiring analysis along the way. She emphasizes the role that each of us have to play in this history, in creating meaning of lives past, because "History is not just what happened in the past. It is what later generations choose to remember." I now feel a real sense of urgency, particularly with my Grandpa's passing, to uncover the stories of the well-behaved women in my family's history.
Here's a more complete review from Publishers Weekly:
In 1976, graduate student Ulrich asserted in an obscure scholarly article that well-behaved women seldom make history. But Ulrich, now at Harvard, made history, winning the Pulitzer and the Bancroft Prizes for A Midwife's Tale—and her slogan did, too: it began popping up on T-shirts, greeting cards and buttons. Why the appeal, Ulrich wondered? And what makes a woman qualify as well-behaved or rebellious? Several chapters of this accessible and beautifully written study are brilliant. In one, Ulrich follows the lead of Virginia Woolf (who invented an ill-fated fictional sister of Shakespeare) by digging into what we know—and don't know—about the women in the Bard's family. In another, she offers a piercing analysis of four 19th-century Harriets—ex-slaves Tubman, Jacobs and Powell, and novelist Stowe—to uncover the interplay of race and gender in questions of liberation. And in a third, richly illustrated chapter, she utilizes a medieval book of days as a window into women's labor through the ages. If other chapters, such as a wide-ranging exploration of the Amazon myth and a rumination on second-wave feminism, don't cohere as tightly or showcase Ulrich's strengths as an extraordinary interpreter of ordinary records, this can be forgiven in a work that is so often sharp and insightful.
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