Reading about women’s lib

I recently acquired a copy of Gabrielle Burton’s book, I’m Running Away From Home but I’m Not Allowed to Cross the Street. It’s “a primer on women’s liberation,” and it’s a really interesting window into what life was like for women in the US in 1972, when it was written. Some of the things Burton writes about still ring true today, while other things sound to me like they were written on an alien planet. I’m captivated by it.

I’m about halfway through the book so far, but it occurred to me that it raised so many interesting political and social issues that I would be remiss not to blog about it alongside my reading. You can expect several upcoming posts about topics such as gender roles, family and parenting, and “women’s issues” (as well as some exploration of what that phrase means). While I get back to combing the first 100 pages for passages that should have made it into posts, I’ll leave you with this quotation from the beginning of the Foreword. I think it does an excellent job setting the tone for the rest of the work.

Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, and Germaine Greer have already written definitive books on the Women’s Movement. Like the three sisters, the books are brilliant, beautiful, and have a lot of class. I keep the trilogy by my front door so that anyone who enters will know where I stand. But none of these books are ones that a person reads in her bathtub. They contain such a wealth of unfamiliar, challenging insights that even the determined reader often succumbs to the temptation to tackle them another day. This primer is to read in that interim.

  • email
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook

February 4, 2009 · Written by
Tags: , ,

Comments

Leave a Reply