Customer Reviews

The Norton Book of Women's Lives

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This is by far the best book I've read in the last few years. I picked it at random from the library, but I didn't want to take it back when I was finished with it. As an aspiring anthropologist, being put smack in the middle of so many different women's lives from all over the world at all time periods of the twentieth century was absolutely fascinating. I've made a list of all the selections that have inspired me enough to make me want to read the book it was taken from, and the list is two pages long! The book is an excellent montage of so many different walks of life, I think it should win some kind of award for it's superb editing. I would recommend this book to anybody interested in other women's lives, and to any men wondering how we really think and feel.

I received this book as part of the Wellesley Book Award, and to be honest, I wasn't expecting much. Most of my friends who had received book awards had gotten dictionaries or other books that looked wonderfully useful if one wanted to fall asleep quickly and on the outside this one seemed to be no exception.
But then I started reading. The introduction itself is so well written, it could stand alone as an essay on women's writing. And then the selections, oh the selections. The choice and editing of the selections are of such a high quality that you never feel as if you are reading only a selection; each piece is long enough to feel complete. And despite the textbook look, it is engrossing in its diversity and quality of writing.
I would recommend this book not only as reading in itself, but also as a jumping-off point. I have marked so many selections that I would like to read in their entirety.
Definitely worth the money.

I love anthologies because they are so rich and various. This one, edited by a woman with a clear, strong ear for women's voices, has plenty to offer: 61 substantial selections from the twentieth-century literature of women's autobiographies, journals, and memoirs.

"I didn't want to do my duty," Phyllis Rose says of herself growing up. (She wanted to be a cowgirl.) "Nor did I want models...of noble self-sacrifice and altruism. I wanted wild women, women who broke loose, women who lived life to the full, whatever that meant. What did it mean to live life to the full? How fully could a woman live?" In this collection, we hear a chorus of "wild women" who show us in many ways how fully we might live. What stories these are, what fascinating lives, lived on the edge of pain, perception, and truth. These are lives that liberate and enlarge the rest of us. Read them, retell them, and use them as models for telling your own story.

by Susan Wittig Albert
for Story Circle Book Reviews
www.storycirclebookreviews.org
reviewing books by, for, and about women

An excellent selection of pieces of autobiographies, which give you a chance to visit many different kinds of important moments and life experiences, in many different societies.