Customer Reviews

Becoming Myself: Reflections On Growing Up Female

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Great book for every woman in the process of "becoming herself." This is a how-to guide to womanhood by women who have walked the walk and are speaking from personal experience. Loved the intimate stories in this book that reveal the most personal lives of great women with autobiographical essays by JK Rowling, Kate Winslet, Maya Angelou and many others, aged 24 (Jamie Lynn Sigler) to 94 (Kitty Carlisle Hart). Contributors focus on personal subjects we all share: family, emotional growth, joys and sorrows. I read the book in random order: just opening it anywhere and reading the story on that page. I love being able to 'browse' through a book like this. The pieces are really diverse which gave me the feeling of 'sitting around a kitchen table' with friends ... some share a lot, some a little. Some are more eloquent, some less. But all feel safe enough to reveal the tender realities of life that are usually held private. Since reading it, the voices of the women come to mind when I least expect it, tapping me on the shoulder with words of wisdom. Great graduation gift or "any time" gift to for women of all ages.

What a delightful book. Reading it is a little like being invited into living room or kitchen of some of the most fascinating women alive today. What a privilege it is to read and learn from Maya Angelou and to understand from her perspective the difference between growing up and growing old. Her wisdom is something I will read and reread.
I wondered who was the inspiration for Hermione in the Harry Potter books and was fascinated by the accounting of how and where the first book was written. An inspiration to all would-be writers. I was amazed by the age span and experiences of the women who shared their personal and often intimate details about growing up as a female in whatever city, town and family setting they were born into.
It's a book I will read, reread and share with my best friends and daughters.
Janet K. Crozier

I love this book! I just received it as a birthday gift from a girlfriend. What a lovely book, filled with inspirational stories of women -- mostly famous. This is the perfect bedside book -- for moments when you want to read what other women have endured and enjoyed as they become themselves. I will share this book with my daughters and my girlfriends.

This book is a great graduation gift for any young women who you want to inspire to live a powerful life. In "Becoming Myself," 50 successful women (many famous, some not) talk about how they grew up and how they got where they are today by staying true to themselves. All the stories are different. Some are shocking, some are funny, some are sweet. All are wise and inspiring.

I loved loved loved this book. It's a real mix in every sense - different women of all ages and walks of life, with the anecdotes extremely varied. Yet there's unity in that everyone seemed to have a sense of their own strength and its source. There's of lot of sage advice contained. It's a great book for people of all ages, and an inspired gift for teenagers seeking role models. Bravo, Ms. Shalit.

It took me a week after reading this book to process my thoughts on it. It was a good book, definitely a great present for a young woman, but I ended up being disappointed by the book overall. I couldn't help feeling that the editor of this book did a real slash job on some of these essay to keep them at the 2-4 pages alloted each author. Many of them, including some from writers whose style I am familiar with, seemed very disjointed and thrown together. Many of the paragraphs seem completely unrelated, jumping from one idea to the next without any connection. It made it difficult to read, and took away from the essays.

There are some good essays in there, Joyce Carol Oates' and surprisingly Julia Stiles' were two of my favorites out of the whole book.

This is a great book. Very interesting and enlightening to women (and men!)

Feminism was soppoed to liberate women from their civil predicament of being second class citizens, but instead it repalced this with making them merely the sexual objects of men, spending their entire lives concerned with nothing but sex and good looks, the depiction of woman as the sexual being on the front of this book is nothing but proving the point. Either stripping in clubs or donning burkas, the modern woman is unequal and in general this is the cause of her won choices. Imagine giving a graduating girl a book about something like success, like one would a boy, since no one would give a boy a book of self blah blah nonsense.

Seth J. Frantzman