Black's edited collection of ER's political writings give us primary materials that lend support to Cook's thesis and offer us some first person commentary. The argument that ER created herself as she hid herself provides a basis to rethink her many identities and the reactions they elicited. Blanche Wiesen Cook's two volume study of ER looks at the construction of her personal and public selves, unraveling some of the seeming contradictions her life has long presented to biographers, friends, supporters, and the general public. The three books that constitute this review provide some answers. How could the same woman who drove my grandmother to obscenities help me to believe in my possibilities? And as I read, I became more confused about who this woman really was. Sitting on the edge of my daughter's bed, in the dim light, ER emerged as my inspiration. But most often, I just read, craving evidence that I could be more than wife, mother, and housekeeper by exploring the world of women and politics. If she paid attention to the story line, I occasionally embellished it. Having purchased Eleanor and Franklin, the first volume by Joseph Lash (1971), I began what we now call multi-tasking. She just wanted me in her room and reading. She did not seem to care what was being read after we finished the children's books that she had selected.
I quickly learned that my four-year-old daughter loved to be read to sleep. Like many in my cohort, I was balancing professional and family life-without much guidance from the world around me. In the 1970s, I was a political science professor and a young mother. I wondered often during those years what made my otherwise tolerant and loving grandmother turn so vehemently on someone. "That goddamn woman" is the one I remember best. When ER would come on the radio during my 1950s childhood, my grandmother would mutter words never directed at anyone else. My paternal grandparents were conservative, Midwestern Republicans who had no use for the Roosevelts or their cronies.
Two are particularly present and frame this review. Like many NWSA Journal readers, I have Eleanor Roosevelt (ER) memories. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999, 360 pp., $15.95 paper. New York: Penguin Books, 1999, 686 pp., $34.95 hardcover.Ĭourage in a Dangerous World: The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt edited by Allida M. New York: Penguin Books, 1992, 587 pp., $l6.95 paper.Įleanor Roosevelt: Volume II, 1933-1938 by Blanche Wiesen Cook. Book Review Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume I, 1884-1933 by Blanche Wiesen Cook Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume II, 1933-1938 by Blanche Wiesen Coo Courage in a Dangerous World: The Political Writings of Eleanor RooseveltĮleanor Roosevelt: Volume I, 1884-1933 by Blanche Wiesen Cook. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
0 kommentar(er)
