That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor
Anne Sebba, 2012
St. Martin's Press
268 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250002969
Summary
Twenty-five years after her death, Wallis Simpson exerts a more powerful fascination than ever. She became one of the most glamorous and vilified woman of the last century yet who was the real person behind the iconic image?
In the first full biography of the Duchess of Windsor by a woman, Anne Sibbe have tried to explore the mind and motivations of this enigmatic American divorcée who nearly became Queen of England and provide a new interpretation of what really happened during the abdication crisis.
Those who know only one thing about British history in the 1930s know about the King who abdicated because he could not continue "without the help and support of the woman I love." Yet many people cannot imagine who such a woman could be to exert such a powerful magnetic force on a man groomed from birth to do his duty as head not just of Britain but of a great Empire.
"That Woman," as she was referred to by the Queen Mother and other members of the Royal Family, became a hate figure for allegedly ensnaring a British king. Born in 1896 in Baltimore, Bessiewallis Warfield endured an impoverished and comparatively obscure childhood which inflamed a burning desire to rise above her circumstances. Neither beautiful nor brilliant and over 40 when she married the former King, she became one of the most talked about woman of her generation for inspiring such deep love and slavish adoration in Edward V111 that even renouncing a throne and an Empire for her was not enough to prove his total devotion.
Wallis lived by her wit and her wits, while both her apparent and alleged moral transgressions added to her aura and dazzle. Accused of fascist sympathies, having Nazi lovers and learning bizarre sexual techniques in China, she was the subject of widespread gossip and fascination that has only increased with the years. In death the duchess became a symbol of empowerment and a style icon often pitted against her assumed rival, the Queen Mother. Wallis Simpson was a woman whose unequivocal aim was to win in the game of life.
Based on new archives, interviews and material never before seen it is only now possible to write a biography with real understanding of the character and motivations of this complex woman at the heart of a key moment in history and to question: Was this really the romantic love story of the century? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1951
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—King's College, London
• Currently—lives in London, England
Anne Sebba is a British biographer, writer, lecturer and journalist. She is the author of eight non-fiction books for adults, two biographies for children and several introductions to reprinted classics.
Anne Sebba (nee Rubinstein) was born in London in 1951. She read History at King’s College, London (1969-72) and after a brief spell at the BBC World Service in Bush House joined Reuters as a graduate trainee, working in London and Rome, from 1972-8. She wrote her first book while living in New York and now lives in London.
Her discovery of an unpublished series of letters from Wallis Simpson to her second husband Ernest Simpson, shortly before her eventual marriage to the ex- King, Edward Vlll, later Duke of Windsor, formed the basis of a Channel 4 film, The Secret Letters, first shown on UK television in August 2011, and also a biography of Simpson, That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson Duchess of Windsor. The letters have led to a reappraisal of The Abdication Crisis. Sebba’s books have been translated into several languages including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian and Polish.
Since working as a correspondent for Reuters, Sebba has written for the (London) Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Spectator, Times Higher Educational Supplement and the Independent.
In 2009 Sebba wrote and presented The Daffodil Maiden on BBC Radio 3, the story of the pianist Harriet Cohen. Cohen inspired the composer Arnold Bax when she wore a dress adorned with a single daffodil and became his mistress for the next 40 years. Gillian Reynolds, in the Daily Telegraph described it as a “frank and moving account...beautifully produced.” In 2010 she wrote and presented the documentary Who was Joyce Hatto? for BBC Radio 4.
In September 2009 Sebba joined the Management Committee of the Society of Authors. She is a longstanding member of English PEN and after several years on the Writers in Prison Committee served twice on the PEN Management Committee. She went to Turkey twice as an official observer for PEN for the trial of journalist Asiye Guzel Zeybeck. She has served on the judging panel of the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize and has twice been a judge for the Biographers’ Club awards. In 2012, Sebba spoke at the Beijing and Shanghai Literary Festivals and the Sydney Writers' Festival. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Anne Sebba cuts through decades of rumor and mythology to try to reveal the truth about this woman and her extraordinary journey from upper-middle-class Baltimore girl to jet-setting royal mistress to lonely outcast.... The book's strength is that Sebba remains objective in telling the story of such a polarizing figure as Simpson. The king's paramour elicits empathy for the media scrutiny she had to endure and for the dilemma she faced as she realized she was trapped in a suffocating relationship. But Sebba doesn't skimp on unflattering details that reveal Simpson's cruel verbal abuse of her husband and her shallow fixation on her weight and wealth.
Sarah Halzack - Washington Post
In contrast to most British assessments of Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson, later the Duchess of Windsor, this book is clear-sighted and unsentimental about, but relatively sympathetic to, the woman for whom King Edward VIII gave up his throne in 1936, shaking Britain and its royal family to the core.
And amazingly, after 75 years, there is new material to assess. Sebba has gained access to previously unexamined Simpson letters that reveal more about who she was, her fears and regrets during the abdication crisis, how she tried to prevent it and the marriage, and how she was nearly destroyed when the “romance of the century” was near universally condemned.
Maria Puente - USA Today
“I hope to humanize rather than demonize” the woman for whose sake King Edward VIII abdicated the British throne, writes Sebba (Jennie Churchill: Winston’s American Mother) in this controversial biography that was a bestseller in Britain. The author, using interviews, previously unavailable letters, and media accounts, explores how Simpson, a spunky Southern belle, changed her life after two divorces and numerous love affairs on two continents, seized the heart of then prince of Wales, and weathered the wrath of the royals and the hostile British press. Two startling speculations concerning Simpson’s medical and psychological state attribute her sexual fierceness and flirtatiousness to a possible form of hermaphroditism and the need to emphasize her femininity. Sebba discloses the tremendous pressure from the royal family and high society on the new king to place English tradition above his bond to the American divorcee with her dubious background. Sebba details the life after the abdication, in which the duchess proved herself a resourceful survivor. This accomplished biography is smart, eloquent, and unafraid to go beyond the myth of the duchess of Windsor.
Publishers Weekly
While the allure of Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII's story has lasted over 70 years, Sebba...presents the complex woman behind that relationship, who was not merely a social climber/seductress.... Verdict: Sebba dispels the myths that surround the pair (such as that theirs was a love story for the ages). Charles Higham's The Duchess of Windsor: The Secret Life spends more time on their alleged Nazi sympathies. Greg King's The Duchess of Windsor: The Uncommon Life of Wallis Simpson supports the love story and defends Wallis Simpson. Sebba's more nuanced biography should be included in any collection covering this subject. —Maria Bagshaw, West Dundee, IL
Library Journal
The story has been told many times but never seems to get old. Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American, took up with King Edward VIII of England, and, in 1936, he abdicated to marry her.... The author makes it clear that Wallis never intended to become the queen, but once she embarked on her affair, she found it impossible to back out, and when the prince suddenly became king, marriage was not what she had planned. Sexual proclivities and domineering personality traits all factor into Sebba’s picture of the Windsor relationship. For popular biography collections. —Brad Hooper
Booklist
An in-depth biography of the notorious Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor....pulls no punches in revealing the secrets of its subject.... It's impossible to know definitively, but Sebba's extensive research has led her to conclude that Wallis may have been born genetically male, but developed outwardly as a female, or, alternatively, that she was a pseudo-hermaphrodite.... Derisively referred to as "that woman" by the Queen Mother, Wallis is depicted, in grand detail, as cunning yet "irresistible" for her charismatic "personal sparkle." Salacious and consuming, this well-researched biography will appeal to readers interested in British political and women's history.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why has Wallis been demonised for so long? What factors have contributed to a reassessment? Do you think revisionism is justified
2. Why might Wallis have been seen as pro- Nazi?
3. To what extent was her Americanism part of the problem? Can you understand why for some in America Wallis has always been a heroine? What characteristics of Wallis’s personality do you find admirable?
4. How do you explain the attitude of the Queen Mother towards Wallis and towards Wallis and Edward?
5. Was the denial of royal honours for Wallis justified in the circumstances or vindictive?
6. Why has Edward V111 been so little criticised?
7. Why are duty and pluck no longer revered compared with today’s goals such as ambition and personal fulfilment?
8. Has our attitude towards divorce changed for the better?
9. What about some of the other characters in my story: Why do you think Winston Churchill behaved as he did? Was Mary an admirable character?
10. What role do you think was played by the wives of politicians such as Lucy Baldwin, Nancy Dugdale Helen Hardinge and Hilda Runciman and why do you think their views have not been taken into account before?
11. Which of the characters do you feel most sympathy for: Mary, Ernest, Henry/Aharon, Aunt Bessie, Alan "Tommy"Lascelles? Which of the characters do you feel should have done more to understand or guide Edward earlier in his life e.g. his parents, his private secretaries, the Archbishop of Canterbury and other church leaders or his girlfriends?
12. Do you agree that Wallis performed a useful service by delivering a new monarch for such critical times?
13. How should she be remembered? As a style icon and if so why? Describe her style. Or as a victim and if so why?
14. Do you believe every generation has a different attitude to key personalities according to historical context?
(Questions from author's website.)
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Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis
Timothy Egan, 2012
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780618969029
Summary
How a lone man’s epic obsession led to one of America’s greatest cultural treasures: Prizewinning writer Timothy Egan tells the riveting, cinematic story behind the most famous photographs in Native American history—and the driven, brilliant man who made them.
Edward Curtis was charismatic, handsome, a passionate mountaineer, and a famous photographer, the Annie Leibovitz of his time. He moved in rarefied circles, a friend to presidents, vaudeville stars, leading thinkers. And he was thirty-two years old in 1900 when he gave it all up to pursue his Great Idea: to capture on film the continent’s original inhabitants before the old ways disappeared.
An Indiana Jones with a camera, Curtis spent the next three decades traveling from the Havasupai at the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the Acoma on a high mesa in New Mexico to the Salish in the rugged Northwest rain forest, documenting the stories and rituals of more than eighty tribes. It took tremendous perseverance — ten years alone to persuade the Hopi to allow him into their Snake Dance ceremony. And the undertaking changed him profoundly, from detached observer to outraged advocate. Eventually Curtis took more than 40,000 photographs, preserved 10,000 audio recordings, and is credited with making the first narrative documentary film. In the process, the charming rogue with the grade school education created the most definitive archive of the American Indian.
His most powerful backer was Theodore Roosevelt, and his patron was J. P. Morgan. Despite the friends in high places, he was always broke and often disparaged as an upstart in pursuit of an impossible dream. He completed his masterwork in 1930, when he published the last of the twenty volumes. A nation in the grips of the Depression ignored it. But today rare Curtis photogravures bring high prices at auction, and he is hailed as a visionary. In the end he fulfilled his promise: He made the Indians live forever. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Born—November 8, 1954
• Where—Seattle, Washington, USA
• Awards—Pulitizer Prize, Journalism (2001); National Book
Award, Nonfiction; Washington State Book Award (twice)
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington
Timothy Egan is an American Pulitzer Prize winning author who resides in Seattle, Washington. He currently contributes opinion columns to the New York Times as the paper's Pacific Northwest correspondent. In 2001, he won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his contribution to the series "How Race is Lived in America."
In addition to his work with the New York Times, he has written six books, including The Good Rain (Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, 1991), Breaking Blue, and Lasso the Wind.
The Worst Hard Time is his non-fiction account of those who lived through The Great Depression's Dust Bowl, for which he won the 2006 Washington State Book Award in history/biography and a 2006 National Book Award.
In 2009 he wrote The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, which details the Great Fire of 1910 that burned about three million acres (12,000 km²) and helped shape the United States Forest Service. The book also details some of the political issues of the time focusing on Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot. Egan won a second Washington State Book Award in history/biography in 2010 for this work, and a second Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award.
In 2012 Egan published a biography of Western and Native American photographer, Edward Curtis: Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Edward Curtis deserves to be remembered as the American artist who racked up the most miles. Traveling by rail, wagon and foot, he undertook a project that struck observers as ambitious and possibly insane. His goal, he said, was to salvage a heritage from oblivion, to document all the tribes in North America that were still intact.... Timothy Egan offers a stirring and affectionate portrait of an underknown figure...[though] the book at times reads less like a thoughtful biography than a sentimental adventure story for boys.
Deborah Solomon - New York Times Book Review
Egan's account of Curtis's life is not so much a traditional biography as a vivid exploration of one man's lifelong obsession with an idea.... Curtis, who died in poverty and obscurity in 1952, qualifies as a Western desperado of a type we don't often hear about. Egan's spirited biography might just bring him the recognition that eluded him in life.
Gary Krist - Washington Post
An obsessive genius neglects his personal life and business matters to pursue a great white whale. It's a familiar tale and the essential narrative of Egan's terrific biography.... Egan fills his chronicle with bright turns of phrase and radiant descriptions.... A sweeping tale about two vanishing ways of life.
Wall Street Journal
Egan here offers a carefully researched portrait of the man the Indians called the “Shadow Catcher.” Evenhanded and free of conjecture, Egan’s narrative traces the career of the 6-foot-2 mountaineer with the Vandyke beard who was born in 1868 and scrabbled from poverty to prominence in Seattle with his camera, along the way rubbing elbows with scientists, presidents, and titans of commerce, before fading into near oblivion before his death in 1952. Egan takes a neutral stance toward Curtis’s sometime manipulations of his subjects’ costumes and rituals. But it’s clear his sympathies lie with the audacious creator of the arresting images of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, the aging Apache Geronimo, Navajo horsemen diminutive against the towering cliffs of the Canyon de Chelly, Hopi maidens with their hair in squash blossom swirls, and some 40,000 more that are his legacy.
Kathryn Lang - Boston Globe
Portrait photographer, so well respected that President Theodore Roosevelt chose him to photograph his daughter’s wedding. Yet in 1900, at the height of his fame, Curtis gave it up to pursue what would become his life’s work—“a plan to photograph all the intact Native American tribes left in North America” before their ways of life disappeared. This idea received the backing of J.P. Morgan and culminated in a critically acclaimed 20-volume set, The North American Indian, which took Curtis 30 years to complete and left him divorced and destitute. Unfailingly sympathetic to his subject, Egan shadows Curtis as he travels from Roosevelt’s summer home at Sagamore Hill to the mesas and canyons of the Southwest tribes and to the rain forests of the Coastal Indians and the isolated tundra on Nunivak Island. Egan portrays the dwindling tribes, their sacred rites (such as the Hopi snake dance), customs, and daily lives, and captures a larger-than-life cast. With a reporter’s eye for detail, Egan delivers a gracefully written biography and adventure story.
Publishers Weekly
Edward Curtis's photographs have been controversial since their rediscovery in the 1970s.... Most damaging to his reputation and his financing efforts was his claim, based on eyewitness accounts, that Gen. George Armstrong Custer's actions at the Battle of the Little Big Horn were not heroic, but in fact cowardly. Egan seeks to restore Curtis to a deserved high reputation. Verdict: This fascinating biography is recommended to readers interested in the American West from the late 19th through early 20th century. —John Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY
Library Journal
New York Times Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Egan (The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, 2009, etc.) returns with the story of the astonishing life of Edward Curtis (1868–1952), whose photographs of American Indians now command impressive prices at auction. This is an era of excessive subtitles--but not this one: "Epic" and "immortal" are words most fitting for Curtis, whose 20-volume The North American Indian, a project that consumed most of his productive adult life, is a work of astonishing beauty and almost incomprehensible devotion..... Lucent prose illuminates a man obscured for years in history's shadows
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher:
1. Egan chooses to use the word "epic" in his subtitle. What does epic mean—and in what way does it apply to the life of Edward Curtis?
2. What do you think of Curtis? What kind of man was he—as a husband, father, artist, advocate, and public figure? Do you think of him as delusional...driven...or visionary?
3. Why did Curtis consider George Custer of the Little Big Horn battle a coward?
4. How does Egan present the West of Curtis's time and before? Is the author's portrait of the past realistic...or idealistic? In what way has the historical West vanished?
5. Do Curtis's photographs, sometimes doctored, reflect an authentic Native American culture? What about the alarm clock he removed from one of his photos, for instance? Or was Curtis striving for something mythic rather than authentic?
6. What made Curtis a controversial figure in his day?
7. How would you describe the Anglo/European Americans attitude toward the Native Americans during Curtis's era? How have those attitudes changed...and what changed them?
8. Egan writes of Curtis:
And just what made a dropout from a one-room schoolhouse think he could get the nation’s top ethnologists to back his project? Balls. Those who didn’t try for the highest peak were doomed to the foothills.
Some critics contend that Egan is too close to his subject and that his book "reads less like a thoughtful biography than a sentimental adventure story for boys." Do you agree or disagree with that statement by New York Times reviewer, Deborah Soloman (see above)?
9. What have you learned about Edward Curtis and/or Native American history after reading Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher? What did you find most surprising—or struck you as particularly interesting—in this book?
10. A fine book to pair this with is Marianne Wiggin's 2007 The Shadow Catcher, a fictionalized biography of Curtis written from the perspective of his wife, Clara. The book was a National Book Award finalist.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Maid Narrative: Black Domestics and White Families in the Jim Crow South
Katherine van Wormer, David Walter Jackson III, Charletta Sudduth, 2012
Louisiana State University Press
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780807149683
Summary
The past is a foreign country; they do things different there.
With this well-known quote from a British novel, the book begins. In the historic descriptions of the norms and culture of the day, the reader is taken on a journey to another time and another place that only exists in the memories of older southerners who dare to remember. In the Deep South of the 1930s through the 1950s, the races were defined in terms of a caste, not class, and as the narrators of this book reveal, most people knew “their place.” For those (the boys and men) who did not, the consequences could be fatal.
The opening chapters of The Maid Narratives draw from studies by anthropologists, historians, and novelists to depict a society that was feudalistic and a clear legacy of slave days. The purpose of The Maid Narratives, as stated by the authors, was to capture these stories and record them in the same way as the slave narratives had been captured and recorded before the last of the survivors were gone.
The official documents do not tell us what these older women can tell us of what daily life was like for the common people, any more than the published records can tell us of what it felt like to abide by the norms and contradictions of an incomplete racial segregation in which the closest intimacy coincided with rules of strict separation. As the white narrators tell their stories to explain and perhaps to relieve their consciences, the black narrators who view themselves far more as survivors than as victims tell their stories to share. In the words of one of the narrators, Irene Williams:
You know sometimes I set up here and I tell my grandbabies how we used to have to do. You know what they tell me? ‘That was back in the olden days.’ I say, ‘No. Honey, you just don’t understand. This was real.’….I hope they will hear our stories and learn the truth..
The history of the Great Migration from the Deep South to Iowa is described briefly in chapter 3. Then we hear directly from the women themselves, from the oldest to the youngest, the stories of growing up as children of the cotton fields, and of the childhoods spent not in the schoolhouse, but in the fields.
The rules of southern etiquette come alive in these narratives in fascinating detail relating to the idiosyncrasies of the individual white families for whom these women worked. Menfolk forced to go into hiding, sexual attacks on the girls and women, grown women forced to address young white children as “Miss” or “Mr.,” the custom of toting or gift giving that was often appreciated—these are among the situations that come to light by these storytellers.
Common to all these stories is a turning point of sorts, because these black narrators all had made the decision to migrate northward, some to continue in domestic service but at much higher pay, others to seek the educational and vocational training they were denied previously. The lives they found there were variously disappointing and fulfilling.
These narratives are complemented by the voices of white women, such as Flora Templeton Stuart from New Orleans, who remembers her maid fondly but realizes that she knew little about her life, and Elise Talmage who wrote a poem called “The Dark Past.” Like these women, many of the white narrators remain haunted by their memories of how they abided by the racial norms of the time; some chose not to use their real names.
Viewed as a whole, The Maid Narratives reveals shared hardships, strong emotional ties across racial lines, and inspiring resilience in the face of mass oppression. (From the publisher.)
Author Bios
Katherine Stuart van Wormer, MSSW, Ph.D.,
Van Wormer, who grew up in New Orleans, is a sociologist and professor of social work at the University of Northern Iowa. As a student she was actively involved in two civil rights movements, one in North Carolina and one in Northern Ireland. She is the author or coauthor of 20 books on various aspects of human behavior, criminal justice, and oppression. Visit her website.
David W. Jackson III, M.A., Ph.D.,
Jackson, who was born in Des Moines, Iowa, is assistant professor in the department of African and African-American Studies at Metropolitan State College of Denver. He is co-producer of the oral video history project “African-American Voices of the Cedar Valley.” In 2006, he received the Trio Achiever of the Year award for the State of Iowa.
Charletta Sudduth, MSW, Ed.D.,
Sudduth, who was born in Waterloo, Iowa, is Title I early childhood coordinator for the Waterloo Community School District. She teaches a class in American racial and ethnic studies at the University of Northern Iowa and has delivered several keynote
addresses on educational issues. (Bios proviced by authors.)
Book Reviews
In The Maid Narratives: Black Domestics and White Families in the Jim Crow South (Louisiana State University Press), the real “Help” talk to authors Jan van Wormer, David W. Jackson III, Charletta Sudduth about what it was like to work for white families during that same era in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Of the 17 women interviewed, the oldest was born in 1906; the youngest in 1953. None of them hold back. Backdoor entrances, separate eating quarters, outside bathrooms, sexual overtures from their male employers—it’s all here, as well as memories of the murder of Emmett Till, visits from the Ku Klux Klan, and the dawn of the civil rights movement. They talk of walking miles to school, of sharecropping and cooking and cleaning from the age of seven. Read this fair-minded study for the reasons the maid themselves give: “…kids need to hear it. They need to know the struggles that black people have gone through to get to the point where we are today because our children are a lost generation. They don’t know the history of the struggle and they need a better appreciation of what they have so they don’t take it for granted.” The book also includes narratives from 15 white women whose contributions, the authors say, “inform in both what they say and in what they do not.”
Gina Webb - Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Long before The Help became a popular book-turned-movie, researchers in Iowa were already hard at work on the real-life version. LSU Press recently published The Maid Narratives, which chronicles the lives of black maids and white employers in Civil Rights-era Louisiana and Mississippi. [The book] contains the stories of black maids and their white employers in the Civil Rights-era South. "We wanted to preserve this history before it died off. Black people say they see the love and healing in the book, but I was struck by some of the negative things," said Katherine Van Wormer, professor of social work at the University of Northern Iowa and one of the book's three authors. "I was very interested in the close bonds that I remember ... between the maids, cooks and the children—very close bonds across racial lines."
Chelsea Brasted - New Orleans Times Picayune
Long before last year’s popular film The Help, scholars in Cedar Falls began interviewing black domestic workers in Iowa...who had their own remarkable stories to tell. The authors of The Maid Narratives...were surprised at what they found. “The white people were just horrible in the movie, and silly,” said [co-author] van Wormer, a white woman who grew up in New Orleans. “The stories were more positive than we thought they would be. All of the interviewees were very forgiving. They weren’t consumed by bitterness, as you expect they might be.” Van Wormer’s own mother grew up with a black maid, although they were so poor during the Depression that the maid had to bring over her own pans to cook. Having a maid was the custom. So was racism, discrimination and cruelty that were also found in the stories of black maids from the 1920s to the 1960s. The domestics were often paid as little as $3 a day, were yelled at or abused, couldn’t use the front door or the bathroom, and were made to feel inferior to whites. Yet a close bond grew between some white and black women that lasted a lifetime.
Mike Kilen - Moines Register
“I wish I was like you—easily amused.”—Kurt Cobain This line from “All Apologies” by Nirvana could easily be used to describe anyone who thought The Help was an accurate depiction of what it was like to be an African-American “domestic” during the late ’50s and early ’60s. For the most part, the film was pure fiction. If you want the real story, you’ll need to pick up a copy of The Maid Narratives: Black Domestics and White Families in the Jim Crow South by Katherine van Wormer, David W. Jackson III and Charletta Sudduth. “Aligning themselves with whites of the professional class, black women often earned the respect of members of the white community and formed alliances that could render them and their families a certain degree of protection,” the authors note. “Black domestic workers moved freely between the white and black communities. Dressed in a maid’s uniform, they had a mobility denied to others of their race. Domestic workers often fell into the role of go-betweens, as interpreters of black life to white people and of white life to black people.”
Bowling Green Daily News
Discussion Questions
1. How were the situations different for black maids who worked in Mississippi versus those in the Louisiana / New Orleans area?
2. What, if anything, surprised you about the stories of the women of the Great Migration?
3. Compare the work conditions as described in the book of sharecropping versus domestic service?
4. Consider the power dynamics in the 1950s and earlier as experienced by the white woman who ran the home and by her servant. How were they alike and different?
5. What did the black narrator (Annie Victoria Johnson) mean by her statement that if the black men kept their women from working in the white homes, when they needed help, there was no one to help?
6. From the black narratives viewed as a whole, how did domestic service in the North differ from domestic service in the South?
7. What did you learn about the norms of segregation from reading these stories?
8. How did the whites who were raised by black maids describe their relationship with them? Choose some examples of differences among the whites referring to the final chapter with the themes.
9. Did you find that whites who were nurtured by black maids were more comfortable around black people when they grew up and moved out in the world?
10. What did you learn of the mistress/maid relationships from the descriptions provided by the white narrators?
11. One of the authors whose mother worked as a maid has described her response to reading The Maid Narratives as a healing experience. What do you think she meant? How about resilience and resistance as revealed in some of the stories?
12. If you were making a movie of this book, which of the episodes described in this book might you use?
13. If you read The Help or saw the movie, how did the real situations described in The Maid Narratives compare with those in the fictional account? (Questions courtesy of authors.)
Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir)
Jenny Lawson, 2012
Penguin Group USA
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425261019
Summary
For fans of Tina Fey and David Sedaris—Internet star Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess, makes her literary debut.
Jenny Lawson realized that the most mortifying moments of our lives—the ones we’d like to pretend never happened—are in fact the ones that define us. In the #1 New York Times bestseller, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson takes readers on a hilarious journey recalling her bizarre upbringing in rural Texas, her devastatingly awkward high school years, and her relationship with her long-suffering husband, Victor.
Chapters include: “Stanley the Magical, Talking Squirrel”; “A Series of Angry Post-It Notes to My Husband”; “My Vagina Is Fine. Thanks for Asking”; “And Then I Snuck a Dead Cuban Alligator on an Airplane.” Pictures with captions (no one would believe these things without proof) accompany the text. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1973
• Where—Wall, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., Angelo State University
• Currently—lives in Texas Hill Country
Jennifer Lawson is an American journalist and blogger from Wall, Texas. She is a graduate of Angelo State University. She is the author of The Bloggess and Ill Advised blogs, co-author of Good Mom/Bad Mom on the Houston Chronicle and a columnist for SexIs magazine.
Lawson is best known for her irreverent writing style. She also used to write an advice column named "Ask The Bloggess" for The Personal News Network (PNN.com) until she quit because they stopped paying her. She suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, OCD, depression and an anxiety disorder.
She was recognized by the Nielsen ratings as one of the Top 50 Most Powerful Mom Bloggers and Forbes listed thebloggess.com as one of their Top 100 Websites for Women. She was a finalist in the 2010 Weblog awards for Best Writing and Most Humorous Writer, and a finalist in the 2011 Weblog awards for Best Writing, Most Humorous Writer and Weblog of the Year.
In 2011 The Huffington Post named Lawson the "Greatest Person of the Day" for her work in raising money for struggling families in December 2010. She was also interviewed on CBC News Network's Connect with Mark Kelley during the fundraising campaign.
Lawson's autobiography, Let's Pretend This Never Happened, was released on April 17, 2012, and by May 6th, reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. She published her second book, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things, in 2015. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Lawson relishes revealing plenty about her life, except perhaps just how much she may exaggerate about it. Fall into her writing, though, and she proves that a memoir need not be exact to be enjoyable. She removes the onus of perfectly reported recollections and leads her readers down the rabbit hole of her memories.... The result: a satisfying, blithe tale of a curious adulthood and curiouser childhood. The book skims through a series of comic essays, akin to [David] Sedaris if he were an anxiety-stricken Texas mother with a fascination with the zombie apocalypse.
Melissa Bell - Washington Post
Jenny Lawson is hilarious, snarky, witty, totally inappropriate, and ‘Like Mother Teresa, Only Better.’
Marie Claire
In punchy chapters that cover a fairly uneventful life in the southern Republican regions, blogger Lawson achieves an exaggerated sarcasm that occasionally attains a belly laugh from the reader (“I grew up a poor black girl in New York. Except replace ’black’ with ’white’ and ’New York’ with ’rural Texas’”), but mostly descends into rants about bodily functions and dead animals spiced with profanity. The daughter of a taxidermist whose avid foraging and hunting filled their “violently rural” Wall, Tex., house with motley creatures like racoons and turkeys and later triggered some anxiety disorder, Lawson did not transcend her childhood horrors so much as return to them, marrying at age 22 a fellow student at a local San Angelo college, Victor, and settling down in the town with a job in “HR” while Victor worked “in computers.” In random anecdotal segments Lawson treats the vicissitudes of her 15-year marriage, the birth of daughter Hailey after many miscarriages, some funny insider secrets from the HR office, and an attempt to learn to trust women by spending a weekend in California wine country with a group of bloggers. With little substantive writing on these subjects, however, Lawson’s puerile sniggering and potty mouth gets old fast.
Publishers Weekly
She's famed on the Internet as the Bloggess ("like Mother Teresa, only better") and also writes an (I hope) tongue-in-check parenting column and a self-styled satirical sex column that must be sizzly because my office computer denies me access. Here, Lawson revisits her rural Texas childhood. With lots of media attention expected and comparisons to Chelsea Handler, this book is one to watch.
Library Journal
In this mordant memoir, Lawson, who calls herself “The Bloggess,” displays the wit that’s made her a hit on the Web.... Lawson, whose award-winning website, TheBloggess.com, averages more than half-a-million page-views per month, ... is funny, but her over-the-top tales eventually take their toll, prompting jaded readers to wonder how much of this stuff she’s making up.
Booklist
A mostly funny, irreverent memoir on the foibles of growing up weird. In blogger Lawson's debut book, "The Bloggess" (thebloggess.com) relies entirely on her life stories to drive an unconventional narrative. While marketed as nonfiction, it's a genre distinction the author employs loosely (a point made clear in the book's subtitle).... While Lawson fails to strike the perfect balance between pathos and punch line, she creates a comic character that readers will engage with in shocked dismay as they gratefully turn the pages.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What specific aspects of Lawson’s childhood particularly intrigued or repelled you? Is it possible to have both reactions at the same time?
2. What are some ways in which the book explores themes of individuality?
3. Were you surprised by the ending of Stanley the Magical Squirrel? Is it possible to find laughter in such horrific stories?
4. Lawson describes her hometown as “violently rural” and struggles to find a point to its existence. In your opinion, did growing up in this town help or hinder her?
5. Some reviewers have said this book is about individuality, and others feel it’s a book about family. What do you believe is the overall theme of the book?
6. Lawson and her husband have extremely different personalities, beliefs, and political backgrounds, yet they’ve managed to stay happily married. What is behind the success of their relationship? In what ways can being opposites help people in a relationship?
7. Lawson wrote about her OCD, phobias, and other mental struggles. Did this make her more or less relatable to you? Have you or has someone you know had a phobia or mental illness so severe that it affected your life?
8. Lawson made the decision to infuse humor into even her most traumatic stories of dealing with infertility, loss, and arthritis. What do you think of this choice? Have you ever used humor for healing?
9. Lawson had family members read and vet the book before it was published, giving them the opportunity to give their opinions on the writing. Is this a good idea for a memoirist? Is it ultimately stifling or respectful? Are there times when someone’s life story is not his or hers to tell?
10. What did you think about the author’s voice, her use of run–on sentences, stream–of–consciousness narrative, profanity, and invented words to create a unique narrative?
11. In the chapter about infertility, Lawson discusses her struggles with suicidal tendencies. What purpose does this section have in the narrative?
12. This book deals with mental illness, poverty, suicide, miscarriage, disease, and other traumatic subjects, yet most people consider it a humor book. Do you agree with this classification?
13. What was your favorite story? Why?
14. Of all the people described in the book, whom did you most relate to or empathize with, and why?
15. What do you think Lawson was looking for in her life? Do you think she has found it?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Consumerist Manifesto Handbook
Charles J. Selden, 2011
Sterling Publishers
223 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781402786488
Summary
The book may inspire readers to no longer accept bad products and indifferent customer service. The book explains the Six Abuses of consumers by corporations—and what can be done when abused by Deception and Manipulation, Rush to Market, Defect Toleration, Outsourcing, Fulfillment Failures and Customer Disservice.
The book uses my consumerist battles to “instruct and delight.” The first half of the book uses comical encounters with corporations from industries like telecoms, airlines, food producers and supermarkets, clothing stores, health services, automobile makers and service centers. The second half shows how to think like an MBA in order how to fight back, sort of
a “Consumers Field Manual” for productively fighting for compensation.
When it was in its final draft, two otherwise brilliant Sterling Publishing editors thought “The Confidential Memo” summary from my make-believe Customer Service Department (pages 124-131) was no fake, but actually a leaked document. The editors wanted me to identify the corporation. Either I am not a good satirist or the corporate world is too much with us. Another case of Truth in Fiction—or Non-Fiction. (From the author.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1936
• Where—Hardford, Connecticut, USA
• Education—B.A., Trinity College; M.A., Iowa
Writers' Workshop; M.A., Stanford University;
M.B.A, Pepperdine University
• Currently—lives in Monclair, NJ and Palo
Alto, CA
In his words:
I have had four careers: I started as a college English teacher at Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas after graduating from University of Iowa. Went to Stanford to get the requisite PhD to pursue my goal of becoming an English professor. Took only two semesters for an early epiphany: I was no more suited for “research” of the sort Stanford’s English faculty had in mind than I was for being an astronaut.
I talked my way into Stanford’s Communication Department and found myself. I taught for a while at San Jose City College. Then came an opportunity to go into textbook publishing with Addison-Wesley in CA. I picked up an MBA while at A-W.
Random House asked me to move to NYC to be the “Media Publisher” in 1979 of a company RH had just acquired. During my RH years I wrote Asking Just-Right Business Questions (Crown, 1987).
In 1986 I had an offer to manage a small video duplication company, which I suggested become a video services company. In 1992 a partner and I bought it, renaming it Full Perspective Video Services. Our clients were PBS itself, several PBS stations, Sesame Street, Golf Digest, several producers and a variety of large corporations like Caterpillar Tractor. I sold FPV to my partner in 2006 to start my current career as a writer and blogger. For about 20 years I have kept files and thought about this book.
I have always been a consumerist, but with a sense of humor adjusted for absurdity. My gross, measured by cash, credits, and stuff of genuine value is currently (and conservatively) over $122,000 adjusted for inflation. I don’t include upgrades, better treatment and incidental amenities. The dollars are roughly 90% documentable. (The stories are of course subject to poetic license, even if I am a non-fiction writer.) When battling corporations, one must think the way they do and be as creative as they are.
As good as the cash is, the comedy is better: The comic material resides in corporate huffery and puffery, attempts to explain product failures and maddening service problems. Corporations put obstacles in the way of dissatisfied consumers because corporations know what they are doing: Get rid of the many and pay off the few.
They have their operating principles and I have mine, which are obviously based on theirs:
—Expect products and services to be as perfect as the dollars paid for them.
—When anything goes wrong, assume you are not the only one who is experiencing the abuse. (They know but won’t tell.)
—Put a dollar value on your time and keep track of how much time was needed to find a decision maker who will compensate you for your disappointment with a product or service.
—Enjoy the comedy and get the cash—or credits or useful coupons or extra points or case of pasta sauce or a papaya fed exxed to you. (From the author.)
Book Reviews
(No mainstream press reviews have been posted online for this book. See GoodReads for helpful reader reviews.)
Discussion Questions
1. What are your expectations when you buy a product or service?
2. Why do corporations treat us the way they do?
3. Do corporations intentionally mislead consumers?
4. When corporations mislead, does it help consumerists if the corporations are penalized?
5. Is the author [of this book] odd?
6. Is the author spiritually defective?
7. Has a corporation abused you lately?
8. Did this book give you a plan of action for a product or service that recently let you down?
9. Is there an official you can contact? How will you measure results?
10. If more consumers were to adopt the author’s approach, what would happen?
(Questions from the book—Appendix D, "Book Club Action," pages 209-213. Charts and tools to use are included.)