The fifties : a women's oral history / Brett Harvey
- Bib ID:
- 2700184
- Format:
- Book
- Author:
- Harvey, Brett
- Edition:
- 1st ed.
- Description:
-
- New York, NY : HarperCollins Publishers, c1993
- xxi, 230 p. ; 22 cm.
- ISBN:
- 0060162791
- Summary:
-
Many think of America in the 1950s as our last happy decade, with every family just like the one in "Leave It to Beaver," and every woman living just like Donna Reed. In fact, it was a time of great fear, especially for women, and especially the fear of not fitting in. As a woman you were odd if you graduated from college without being married; if you were married, you were odd if you didn't immediately have children; if you had children, you were odd if you also wanted to work. Before the feminist movement, women were treated as second-class citizens whose roles were utterly restricted, and The Fifties: A Women's Oral History fully explores those roles, the women who lived them, and the women who broke the molds.
Filled with moving and revealing stories from a broad canvas of women speaking in their own words, The Fifties tells what it really was like to be a "good girl," to get an illegal abortion, to try against all odds for an advanced academic degree, to raise children and keep a home in the suburbs, to follow your dreams of having a profession, and even to live, politically and sexually, far from the mainstream of American life. These are stories of women's lives - some very tragic, some remarkably heroic - and they reveal to us all over again an era we thought we knew so well.
- Full contents:
-
- Ch. I. Going All the Way
- Ch. II. Getting Caught
- Ch. III. Post-Doc or Paella?
- Ch. IV. Mrs. Someone
- Ch. V. The Motherhood Drift
- Ch. VI. Living the Dream
- Ch. VII. Something to Fall Back On?
- Ch. VIII. Swimming Upstream
- Ch. IX. The Silence
- Ch. X. Which Side Are You On?
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (p. [229]-230).
- Subject:
- Copyright:
-
In Copyright
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Copyright status was determined using the following information:
- Material type:
- Literary Dramatic Musical
- Published status:
- Published
- Publication date:
- 1993
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