Assiduous research and clear prose give Murray her due.
A cradle-to-grave account about one of the most interesting, accomplished, and controversial figures in 20th-century America who is far too little known.
Pauli Murray (1910-1985), who fought valiantly against Jim Crow prejudice, came to be known as “Jane Crow” due to her mixed-race heritage, her female gender, and her own perception of herself as transgender. As Rosenberg (Emerita, History/Barnard Coll.; Changing the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think About Sex and Politics, 2004, etc.) shows, Murray, never at ease psychologically, descended from a long line of mentally ill family members, and orphaned early—her father was murdered, and her mother was rendered frail by repeated childbirth—overcame countless obstacles throughout her life. She left her racially charged North Carolina home to earn a college degree in New York City, bounced back from being rejected for graduate studies at the University of North Carolina because of her part-black heritage (even though her white great-great-grandfather had served on the governing board there), graduated from Howard University Law School, and began influencing public policy outside academia. Murray’s work on discrimination influenced lawyers and judges to desegregate public schools, protect the constitutional rights of women, and move toward protecting other minorities as well. She considered herself queer in terms of sexuality, often dressing so that distinguishing her gender proved difficult; in terms of gay and queer rights in general, she was clearly way ahead of her time. Later in life, Murray inspired Betty Friedan and others to co-found the National Organization for Women, smashed academic barriers at Brandeis University, and earned ordination in the Episcopal Church as the first female black priest. One of Rosenberg’s most fascinating extended anecdotes illuminates Murray’s struggle to write and publish her 1956 memoir, Proud Shoes. She gained attention as a memoirist around the same time that Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin were also breaking racial and class barriers as authors.
Assiduous research and clear prose give Murray her due.Pub Date: April 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-19-065645-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
