Tag: Autobiography

rhube:

prairie-homo-companion:

this is from a real diary by a 13-year-old girl in 1870. teenage girls are awesome and they’ve always been that way.

Read this – oh my goodness, this girl was wonderful.

Cite your sources! People always want to read the book or article!
From here

DS HOOBLER, DOROTHY Real American Girls Tell Their Own Stories; by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler. Atheneum, 1999 104p illus. with photographs ISBN 0-689-82083-6 $12.95 R Gr. 4-6 Through excerpts from letters, diaries, and memoirs, readers discover the child- hoods of American girls from a variety of class, cultural, and historical perspec- tives. The voices of twenty-four girls span the eighteenth through twentieth century. Arranged in brief topical sections, “Best Friends,” “School Days,” “In Trouble,” “Just Having Fun,” “Boys,” and “Becoming a Woman,” the excerpts come from primary sources, mostly from the mid to late 1800s. Many readers will recognize Louisa May Alcott and Red Cross founder Clara Barton, but most of the names will be unfamiliar, such as the Winnebago Mountain Wolf Woman or Helen MacKnight, one of the first women doctors in the U.S. The excerpts are humor- ous, distinctive, and implicitly feminist, while covering topics and feelings that will resonate with contemporary readers: “Have come across such a glorious book called ‘Boys Play Book of Science.’ Am going to read it through and see if whether ain’t some experiments Bess and I can try. Won’t it be jolly if we really can? But it takes money money money even for the privilege of blowing one’s self up”- from the diary of Martha Carey Thomas, 1870. The writings range from the girlish voice of a nine-year-old, to Mountain Wolf Woman’s poignant recounting of her first menstruation, to an incident of prejudice recalled by an Asian Ameri- can teenager. The best excerpts are diary entries which engage readers through the immediacy of first person and the specificity of time and place: “I don’t want to be alive when the year 2000 comes, for my Bible teacher says the world is coming to an end then, and perhaps sooner.” Black-and-white photos (unfortunately uncaptioned) and a list of credits accompany the text. This book should find readers among the fans of the American Girl or Dear America series and can serve as a springboard to history and journal writing.

Review: Episodes by Blaze Ginsberg

I really wanted to like this book. I liked Raising Blaze, his mother’s parental account. It’s a personal account by an autist, which I always want more of. I even liked the idea of the format, which I know from reviews here put some readers off. But this book’s unique style and presentation soured for me very quickly for one reason – the continual misogyny and male entitlement.

Blaze’s attitude to girls his own or near his own age is disturbing. If they’re a friend, he flies into rages if he so much as sees them talking to another guy. If they’re a new acquaintance, he immediately scouts them as a potential girlfriend and demands their number or email address, then flies into a fury again if they never reply/answer. (Spoiler: None of them ever do.) This jealousy and rage even extends to girls he’s never met or seen – if he meets someone new and finds out they have a sister, then discovers the sister has a boyfriend, he immediately ‘hates’ them. That’s right – hates. And not just in a passing annoyed way – he hates them enough for it to ruin his entire day or a song he liked at the time.

For those who might say ‘he’s a teenager’ or ‘he’s autistic, he can’t do regular relationships’, stop right now. This has nothing to do with age or autism, and everything to do with toxic masculinity. Blaze is the result of a society that tells men, especially quirky men, that they’re ‘entitled’ to whatever girl they like. That if they push hard enough the woman they want will say yes and become a reflection of their desires. Blaze’s incessant girlfriend hunt isn’t born of a desire for romance, intimacy or companionship. The book seems to make it quite clear – he wants a girlfriend because it’s the next achievement marker in life. That’s why he demands the numbers of every girl he meets. The individual woman doesn’t matter, because she’s just an object to be gained; a proof of his masculinity.

The book was written some time ago, so I hope that in the intervening years, Blaze has learned more about what it means to be a receptive, not aggressive partner. Because if he hasn’t… well, women deserve better.