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Overview
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.Editorials
Booknews
The author interviewed 92 women who were in their late teens to mid- 20s during the 1950s, and she uses extended quotes and life synopses to portray how women felt and acted during that decade. The first six chapters move chronologically through the phases of a woman's life, from college to marriage to motherhood; the second four chapters are about women who deviated from the norm in one way or another. No index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Book Details
Published
June 6, 1994
Publisher
New York : HarperPerennial, 1994.
Pages
256
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780060924614