March TIOLI - 20th Century Women

As requested, here's a thread for discussion about books for the March TIOLI Challenge #5.

Girl Scouts: 100 Years

Read a book about a 20th century woman, group of women or women’s organization

On March 12th, 1912, Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Scouts in the United States. To honor the woman and the organization (and Women’s History Month) I challenge everyone to read a book

1. that is about a woman, a specific group of women or an organization that is made up of or primarily serves women and girls

AND

2. in which the woman was alive during and/or the group / organization was in existence in the 20th century. For clarification, the woman may have been born in the 19th century, but she must have been alive into the 20th Century.

BTW, the theme for Women’s History Month 2012 is Women’s Education – Women’s Empowerment.

Thank you for adding this thread.

I love reading about women's lives--from the most mundane to the most inspiring.

It will be a bit before I get to this challenge, but I'm really interested to see what everyone is reading!

In keeping with my inspiration for the Challenge, I'll be reading Juliette Gordon Low: The Remarkable Founder of the Girl Scouts by Stacy A. Cordery which was just published this month (February). There have been lots of bios of JGL written for children and Lady from Savannah which was published in the 1950s, which I always felt was pretty sanitized. I've heard the new bio is pretty well researched - we'll see!

There are so many books I could read for this Challenge - so many books I should read. It should be interesting to see what other folks pick up.

I am currently reading The Stream Runs Fast, the autobiography of famous women's suffragist Nellie McClung. It deals with the begininning of her married life in the late 1890's in rural Manitoba and goes up to her recollections on her life during the war years of the 1940s. I'm just now getting into her work with the women's rights movement.

So far I'm really enjoying it, I like the descriptions she gives of life in a turn of the century rural Prairie town. There's something nostalgic there which makes me wish that I lived in a slower time.. instead of the ultra fast paced "modern" world.

I have just finished Barbara Kingsolver's Holding the Line, about the Arizona Copper Mine Strike of 1983.

Although most of the striking miners were mostly men, the picket lines were composed mostly of women. This was partly because of a court order that prevented more than five miners being on the picket line at any time. Most of the picketers consequently were miners' wives, members of the union's "women's auxiliary."

Kingsolver addresses women's labor issues by recording the stories of women miners, and broader issues of empowerment by telling how women on the picket line frequently discovered interests and abilities and strength that they did not know they had. She also addresses the unique challenges faced by Hispanic women, since Hispanics were significantly represented in the workforce.

It's not afeel-good story in any sense-- in fact it is infuriating-- but it is quite good.

5: I have that one and just wish I knew where it is, and I'd join in with you in reading it.

Holding the Line looks good, but then I've never read anything by Barbara Kingsolver that wasn't.

I just finished The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women by Jessica Valenti and it was terrific. She starts right off in the introduction saying: Girls "going wild" aren't damaging a generation of women, the myth of sexual purity is. The lie of virginity - the idea that such a thing even exists - is ensuring that young women's perception of themselves is inextricable from their bodies, and that their ability to be moral actors is absolutely dependent on their sexuality. It's time to teach our daughters that the ability to be good people depends on their being good people, not on whether or not they're sexually active. This is such an important book, especially right now with all the craziness about reproductive rights. It's a pretty short easy read too, in fact I was surprised and disappointed when it ended. But then there's a great section listing groups for women and women's blogs. It's a great resource.

I'm now reading a book I find fascinating. It's an autobiography and about the inner strength of one particular young woman so I'm moving my book into this challenge from another. The book itself, Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman, was just published and is about a woman who was raised in the tradition of the Satmar Chasidim (a sect of fervently Orthodox Jews).

Raised by her grandparents because her own mother was no longer a part of that community and her dad was mentally unstable, Deborah always had a questioning mentality and a spirit of independence. These characteristics, I believe, are what will eventually lead to her leave her own tightly-knit community. I'm only halfway through this book now but moving through it quite rapidly. It is such a well written and engaging story.

This is an amazing peek into a world not often revealed to outsiders and is reminiscent of the novel by Pearl Abraham called The Romance Reader. Although names have been changed in Feldman's book, the story itself is not fictitious.

I have Unorthodox on hold at the library, but it looks like it'll be quite a while before it's my turn.

No wonder! It's a super interesting read.

I read My Enemy's Cradle by Sara Young for this challenge - a novel set in World War Two and dealing with the Lebensborn organization. It was a very good book - 5 stars - and also a very important one. My full review is here.