An insightful contribution to women’s history.
The circumscribed paths of women’s lives emerge from a deeply researched history.
Kerrison (History/Villanova Univ.; Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South, 2005) illuminates women’s experiences in early America through the lives of Thomas Jefferson’s three daughters: Martha and Maria, his children by his wife, and Harriet Hemings, the offspring—one of four surviving children—of his relationship with the slave Sally Hemings. As the author acknowledges, Jefferson’s long affair with Hemings has been well-documented by Annette Gordon-Reed and Monticello historian Lucia Stanton. Kerrison draws from those works as well as abundant historical and archival sources to portray “the benefits and perils” of each daughter’s experiences. Jefferson’s enlightened ideas about education extended only to men. He saw little use in educating females, who were not permitted entrance to the University of Virginia, which he founded. After her mother died, Martha accompanied Jefferson to Paris, attended a convent school, learned to speak French fluently, and absorbed France’s antipathy to slavery. Still, like her sister, she was expected to embrace “the life of wife, mother, and plantation mistress”—including overseeing slaves—tasks that proved, “after Paris, a trial so arduous as to require heroism to be endured.” While Martha was in France, the younger Maria was left behind with relatives; “her peripatetic childhood” was marked “by only brief periods of loving stability that came to sudden unannounced ends.” Even after Jefferson returned to America, his political obligations kept him away from the family’s home. Kerrison discovered more sources to document Martha’s life than Maria’s: a talented amateur pianist, Maria died in childbirth at 25, barely a memory for her surviving son. Martha lived into her 60s, keeper of family papers. But the author’s greatest challenge was finding evidence of Harriet’s life, both at Monticello and later, when she left Virginia and, passing as white, probably lived the rest of her life in Washington, D.C. Despite Kerrison’s dogged and thoroughly detailed detective work, Harriet’s life remains a mystery.
An insightful contribution to women’s history.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-88624-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
Graceful and deeply felt.
A collection of personal pieces, combined into an affecting memoir by longtime New Yorker editor Angell.
The author, a noted baseball writer (A Pitcher’s Story, 2001, etc.), has many intimate connections to the magazine Gardner Botsford once dubbed “The Comic Weekly,” in which most of these reminiscences originally appeared. His mother, Katherine, was the New Yorker’s fiction editor; years later, Angell held her former job—and occupied her office. His stepfather, E.B. White, was the magazine’s most important contributor during its most influential years. The memoir mostly concerns New Yorker colleagues and other remarkable people who have been a part of the author’s life. His father, lawyer Ernest Angell, lost Katherine to the younger White but over the years became a figure of immense importance to Roger. Angell loved his mother, loved White, loved his first wife (not much here about the cause of their 1960s divorce), loved his coworkers, loved his job. His portraits are really tributes, whether of the well-known William Maxwell, V.S. Pritchett, Harold Ross or William Shawn, or the lesser-known Botsford and Emily Hahn. Angell offers some New Yorker–insider tidbits (Ian Frazier mimicked Shawn’s voice so well that he could fool colleagues over the phone) and a bit more than you want to know about some of his aunts, one of whom wrote a book about Willa Cather. A dazzling story-within-a-story describes a 1940 round of golf with a mysterious woman who lost a valuable ring. The author seems uncertain how an iPod works but reveals an expertise with machine guns. His fickle memory frustrates and bemuses him. Sometimes he can recall only sensory images; sometimes the story unreeling in his mind skips, stops, fades, dissolves into something else. In several of his most appealing passages, he writes about the fictions that memory fashions.
Graceful and deeply felt.Pub Date: May 8, 2006
ISBN: 0-15-101350-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
IN THE NEWS
A slim volume packed with nourishing nuggets of wisdom.
Life lessons from the celebrated poet.
Angelou (A Song Flung Up to Heaven, 2002, etc.) doesn’t have a daughter, per se, but “thousands of daughters,” multitudes that she gathers here in a Whitmanesque embrace to deliver her experiences. They come in the shape of memories and poems, tools that readers can fashion to their needs. “Believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things,” she writes, proceeding to recount pungent moments, stories in which her behavior sometimes backfired, and sometimes surprised even herself. Much of it is framed by the “struggle against a condition of surrender” or submission. She refuses to preach or consider her personal insights as generalized edicts. She is reminded of the charity that words and gestures bring and the liberation that comes with honesty. Lies, she notes, often spring out of fear. She cheated madness by counting her blessings. She is enlivened by those in love. She understands the uses and abuses of violence. Occasionally a bit of old-fashioned advice filters in, as during a commencement address/poem in which she urges the graduates to make a difference, to be present and accountable. The topics are mostly big, raw and exposed. Where is death’s sting? “It is here in my heart.” Overarching each brief chapter is the vital energy of a woman taking life’s measure with every step.
A slim volume packed with nourishing nuggets of wisdom.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6612-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2008
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