A Woman of Uncertain Character: The Amorous and Radical Adventures of My Mother Jennie (Who Always Wanted to Be a Respectable Jewish Mom) by H [Hardcover]

Clancy Sigal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 2006

This memoir is about Clancy Sigal's intense attachment to his fast-talking, redhaired, sexy, unwed mother Jennie, a firebrand union organizer, and his roaring Oedipal rivalry with his mostly absent father Leo who carries a gun to social occasions. In the wide-open, violent Chicago of the Depression and war years, Jennie, in her Cuban heels and flaming lipstick, is a single mother on welfare trying to raise a wild rebellious son in a twilight world between law and lawlessness. She is defiant, vulnerable, sexually alive, high stepping, man-loving, woman-friendly, wisecracking — fearlessly facing down hostile scabs armed with shotguns and clubs. Along with the portrait of Jennie, this book tells a rollicking, profane, and gritty tale of bottom-feeding street life, race riots, riding the rails, and what happens when a gang boy is mistakenly sent to an all-girls' high school.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Screenwriter Sigal (Frida), a Renaissance man blacklisted in Hollywood and active in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, draws from his tempestuous childhood in the 1930s in gangland/union-busting Chicago. This vivid, poignant and political memoir depicts his complicated, beloved mother, a "crazy bohemian" Russian Jewish émigré immersed in the politics and mores of her time (she is now deceased). Jobless but never manless, Jennie Persily, youngest of 10, settled on Manhattan's Lower East Side, attended lectures given by John Reed and Emma Goldman, and fashioned her politics after theirs. An organizer for unions, she called her first strike at 13. An unwed mother at 31, she brought Clancy with her as she traveled the country by train, organizing. Along the way there were many men (and some women), and close calls with police and gangland hoods over her union activities. Clancy's childhood was peppered with characters like Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky and the "abusive Swede," his favorite of his mother's lovers. Gritty prose worthy of any classic noir film propels this engaging, often tender memoir of a larger-than-life woman and her self-deprecating but accomplished son, who still misses their shared adventures. (May)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Voluptuous redhead Jennie Persily was a stylish Russian-Jewish American labor organizer (and single mother) who could outsmart and stare down the toughest Chicago cops and southern sheriffs. Sigal, who tags himself as a "Flapper Age hootchy-kootchy speakeasy baby," and who became a Hollywood screenwriter blacklisted in the McCarthy era, accompanied his brave, zealous mother all across the South during the 1930s as she took on the dangerous work of organizing black women workers, then held his own in Chicago's tough Jewish neighborhood known with all due hilarity as the Great Vest Side. A buddy of Studs Terkel, Sigal has a truly revelatory story to tell, and he writes with pizzazz and sensitivity, sounding like a blend of Mark Twain (he always wanted to be Huck Finn), Saul Bellow, and Stuart Dybek as he remembers the harsh demands of the Depression, his radical mother's resourcefulness and strength, and the escapades of his fellow "street yids," all the while offering a rare inside view of the revolutionary American labor movement. His rough-and-tumble coming-of-age stories are rife with pain, humor, and a gritty beauty, while Jennie emerges as a force of nature: bountiful, righteous, volatile, and indomitable. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (April 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786717483
• ISBN-13: 978-0786717484
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,155,447 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Do yourself a favor and discover this provocative author, July 27, 2006

By 

S. Potts - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Woman of Uncertain Character: The Amorous and Radical Adventures of My Mother Jennie (Who Always Wanted to Be a Respectable Jewish Mom) by H (Hardcover)

Clancy Sigal made me fall in love with his mother Jennie in his unsentimental memoir of a sometimes violent and crazy life. She's the mother I wish I had: passionate, irreverent, protective and smart. The pain and love Sigal feels for his mom hits you like a punch in the gut.

Dynamite scenes of young, street-tough Clancy's roller coaster life with his mysterious and powerful mother are punctuated by glimpses of his current relationship with his 10 year old son Joe. Together, they invoke the spirit of Jennie as they visit her grave, throw a baseball around or jog together, and she, in turn, surrounds them with her tough, maternal love. She lives again, through Sigal's gritty and ironic style.

Capone gangsters and cops-on-the-take are a normal part of the lives of this compelling mother-and-child team who, as they travel from city to city, often take false names. Always on the edge of the law, forever skipping out on landlords and creditors, they're a magnificent reminder of what it takes to stay alive in hard times: guts and guile.

This memoir led me to Sigal's other books: Going Away, Weekend in Dinlock, Zone of the Interior (re-released this year - an insanely brilliant semi-fictionalized account of his time with the famous/notorious `anti-psychiatrist' R.D. Laing) and The Secret Defector. Do yourself a favor and discover this provocative author - funny, authentic, political and deeply moving.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A terrific story about growing up poor and on the left, May 13, 2006

By 

Jon Wiener (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Woman of Uncertain Character: The Amorous and Radical Adventures of My Mother Jennie (Who Always Wanted to Be a Respectable Jewish Mom) by H (Hardcover)

Clancy Sigal tells a terrific story of his life a boy with Jennie, his fierce and fabulous mother, a tough, smart labor organizer of the 1930s and 1940s. She taught him never to scab and never to tell the cops who they really were. The writing is vivid and a lot of fun -- and the book describes a political world we have lost: the rough, passionate working class left of the Depression era.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Oh, my Mama, February 1, 2007

By 

D. Stukenbroeker - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Woman of Uncertain Character: The Amorous and Radical Adventures of My Mother Jennie (Who Always Wanted to Be a Respectable Jewish Mom) by H (Hardcover)

This book works on many levels:
1. OK, if you just want a good read, Clancy tells the story of his growing up with his long suffering mother, Jennie, in a humorous, compelling, self-deprecating and insightful way. He evokes urban life in the poverty-ridden Depression many would have liked to forget, but which, for Clancy, seems to have been the most alive time of his life. But aside from that -
2. History
(a) A must have for the Chicago Historical Society library. A detailed description of life in one particular Chicago neighborhood in the 1930's Depression and WWII years. Clancy describes life as a working-class, street kid where the neighborhood and his fellow adolescent (by today's standards fairly harmless) gang members are a whole world and all a guy needs.
(b) Also a must for students of Jewish American history. An on-the-ground, day-to-day account of what it was like to be a very secular Jewish American kid at the time and how he, his mother, their friends and their world tried to define their Jewishness.
(c) For political history you get mother, Jennie, and usually absent father, Leo, who are both hard core labor organizers with a commitment forged by the often life or death pre-WWII American labor movement. It is also a reminder of when America had real Socialists and real Communists, who were bigger enemies of each other than of the capitalists.
3. Sociology/Psychology
(a) Jennie, a Russian immigrant, ostracised by her Communist, New York family when she ran off with the faithless socialist, Leo. Single mother of an illegitimate child working as a seamstress and covert union organizer to support herself and her child. Clancy thoughtfully observes and analyzes the stresses and social pressures his mother and similar women of the era suffered and how these shaped Jennie's, and their, characters.
(b) Clancy also tells, again with much self-deprecating humor, the effect all this had on him, not only growing up but how it shaped his future life, and how it is still shaping the next generation, his son. (See also Clancy's novel, Zone of the Interior, based on his experiences with psychiatrist R. D. Laing.)