germinal ( )

very positive like her face. i read this because an excert was in written by herself and i'm trying to read all the memoirs. some are not easy to find. ( )

Gloria Steinem is a good writer and an interesting public figure. I've never been ashamed to call myself a feminist and reading this book of essays makes me proud of that. The memoir section is the strongest with its heartfelt storytelling. The profiles of five women are also intriguing. The shorter essays about issues are a bit repetitive but they do serve to remind us how far we've come since the 1970s and how far we have yet to go. ( )

This is the sort of book that on one hand, can remind me of why I think it is a good thing that feminism exists, and why, on the other hand, I stopped calling myself a feminist.

Gloria Steinem's piece about her mother is a moving, stark example of the problems of mental illness. I dislike it, on the other hand, because I feel that Steinem, as well as other feminists such as Germaine Greer, twist feminism to transfer responsibility from family members to society. Greer's excuses for her father are somewhat sickening.

As I expected, I didn't agree with her about the subject of work. When she claimed that feminism honored virginity, I threw the book across the room so hard it hit the opposite wall.

Still, worth reading as a view of society from a respected (by some) activist. ( )

Gloria Wrote Her Mother's Song To Enable & Encourage Other Daughters To Discover Their Mothers' Songs

This review is not a review of the whole book. For focus, it is a review of "Ruth's Song (Because She Could Not Sing It)," a memoir essay written by Gloria Steinem about her mother who suffered from serious mental illness throughout Gloria's entire life. But before I focus on that essay, I want to mention that this book also contains an essay "Alice Walker: Do You Know This Woman? She Knows You" written in 1982 before The Color Purple won the Pulitzer Prize the following year.

If you are trying to decide whether you want to buy this book, pick it up in the book store and read Gloria's essay on her mother's detailed history of mental illnesses. "Write what you know" is a common adage, and it rings true here. If you want to understand what energized Gloria to take on a life of advocacy promoting women's rights and equality, reading this essay will help you easily understand how her personal suffering has given her such robust motivation for so many years to combat the forces Gloria believes led her mother to become mentally disabled, to varying degrees, for all of Gloria's life. Gloria starts by inquiring into the mysteries of what led her uncle and mother to shut down and completely change from the outgoing and incredibly bright people they were in their young adulthood (her uncle a brilliant electrical engineer, and her mother a math teacher who once taught college calculus) to meeker and lower functioning older adults. She notes that the family was concerned about her uncle, but not as engaged in trying to remedy her mother's ailments.

Gloria lives with the hindsight that she did not know in her youth how to possibly help her mother better, "Assuming there to be no other alternative, I took her home and never tried again," and "Perhaps the worst thing about suffering is that it finally hardens the hearts of those around it," and "For many years, I was obsessed with the fear that I would end up in a house like that one in Toledo. Now, I'm obsessed instead with the things I could have done for my mother while she was alive, or the things I should have said to her. I still don't understand why so many, many years passed before I saw my mother as a person, and before I understood that many of the forces in her life were patterns women share." Gloria spent many years growing up with only herself and her mother in the home while her mother suffered from agoraphobia (primarily suffered by women), terrors, delusions and many other cognitive deficiencies. Her mother suffered from depression and other mental roadblocks, spent time in sanatoriums, was drug dependent, and could not work outside the home.

Please, please read it if you or any woman you care about has either suffered from mental illness, or if they "became a different person" at some point in their life. I have a female relative that all my uncles could not understand why she "changed so drastically" and fell into never ending depression, drug dependency and general dysfunction. But I understand many of the likely reasons for those declines, declines that our extended familial environment contributed to more than most of my family ever realized or were willing to acknowledge.

Gloria's mother sold her only home so Gloria could go to college. She encouraged both Gloria and her sister to leave home for "four years of independence she herself had never had." Before certain things happened, she was one of the first female journalists and went to dances when her religion and community told her the music was sinful. Why does Gloria share this private and painful family history? I believe she wants to help teach other women how to tell their own stories. Each woman is best at telling her own story. But when they cannot or do not sing their own song, sometimes others sing it for them, to share their beauty. Gloria concludes with, "At least we're now asking questions about all the Ruths in all our family mysteries. If her song inspires that, I think she would be the first to say: It was worth the singing." ( )