Customer Reviews

Written by Herself: Autobiographies of American Women: An Anthology

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

 

 

Jill Ker Conway is a good writer and editor. She has collected here a group of American women's stories, all of which are fascinating. Before each memoir, she writes a short explanation, but it is the women's stories that stick with you. The ones that stuck with me most were the one of the escaping slave woman, who hid in an attic crawl space for almost a year, so desperate was she for freedom -- and the one written by Margaret Sanger. I give this book frequently as a gift to young women -- for Bat Mitzvah, graduation, to mark some important milestone in their lives. By reading about other women's struggles to define their lives, you learn more about your own.

I discovered this book on my own, no one told me about it. I bought it mostly on the strength of Jill Ker Conway's writings. I trust her judgement.
This book is now at the top of my favorites. It is a compilation of twenty-five autobigraphical sketches, written with truth, genius and verve, each one of them. I had to take them one at a time, letting each one digest before I went on. Each time I thought, phew, the next one won't match up and yet it did. The voices and stories are extraordinary. I am going to buy it as a gift over and over again. It is more than a jewel. It is a necklace of gems.

This anthology includes both previously published and previously unpublished memoirs, some by women whose names I recognized and others by women whose names I'd never heard before. Editor Jill Ker Conway, author of The Road from Coorain, has selected a true cross section. Physicians trained in the days when "ladies" simply didn't enter that profession, scientists, activists, and scholars, each writer speaks powerfully in her own voice; and the result is a work that intrigued as well as informed me. I'm looking forward to reading the second volume.