Revelations--Diaries of Women

Rating:
Summary: Some nice material, but painfully dated
Review: For the most part, these are some great excerpts from womens' journals (though I wish there had been more than just one diary which was written before the 19th century!). However, it becomes painfully obvious by a lot of the editorial comments and the selection process they admitted to using that this came out in the Seventies. I've read other anthologies of journals like this, and they don't make it obvious which era they came out in. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this came out at the height of womens' lib, and the editors seem like they went a bit overboard. They were certainly well-meaning, but a lot of stuff that came out in this era now looks silly and like people got too carried away in that flush of an era of new possibilities and horizons. Particularly irksome is how they say that they didn't pick journallers based on if they lived in a historically interesting time, but rather admitted "Our own tastes led us to put aside those that posited a self we didn't like or find interesting, and to seek out those that demonstrated character as the ability to make moral distinctions and choices according to a personal code rather than the social or religious codes of the age in which they wrote." So then you'd rather have someone who went against the grain and whose viewpoints jive with your own rather than have someone whose beliefs you might disagree with even if she were personally religious or held to the moral code of her day and age because that was how she felt anyway, with or without the rest of society acting that way. I'd rather read journals from women who lived in interesting historical time periods, not from journals which were selected only because of political or social beliefs. It's like they were trying to find women from other eras whose opinions or personal lives agreed with what was going on in the Seventies, like sexual liberation or not getting married, and admitted that they discarded a journal which was historically interesting yet "cast too little light on the personality of the author." And Carolina Maria de Jesus did incredible things for the poor people of Brazil, but she also had all three of her children by different fathers and didn't marry any of them; is that the type of woman you want your daughter to emulate in terms of morals? I was also disgusted by the diary of Evelyn Scott, who ran away to Rio de Janiero at the age of twenty with a married man, pregnant with their illegitimate child. I'm not surprised that a number of these journals are now out of print, because they're so dated and no longer relevant! An awful lot of their comments seem like putting words in peoples' mouths; how would they know that some journaller they tossed aside wasn't status quo or religious because it was her integral nature the same way as it was another woman's integral nature to shun marriage and mainstream sexual behaviour?

It has never occured to me that I keep journals because I feel I have no other outlet of expression and like my views would be stifled otherwise, or to find "my true nature." I also don't think that any normal journallers think about why they're journalling, or if their journals are expressions of love, work, or power, as though life can be compartmentalised into such tidy and specific little categories. Most journallers just want to keep a record of their lives. "Although earlier taboos are disappearing about what is acceptable for a woman to feel, and although personal matters that were never confided even to a close friend are now casual dinner-table conversation, many women still keep diaries." There's a shocker. "As we continue to speak more openly to each other and to men, breaking the long silence about what a woman's inner life is like, dropping false personas, the need for diaries as an emotional outlet may disappear." That must be why so many people still keep journals as an emotional outlet. I think most women across the ages have kept journals just because they wanted to, not to express anger at the system or to have an outlet for illicit and taboo beliefs! "To read this book of selections from women's diaries is, for a woman reader, to experience an excitement, a warm recognition, and a dizzyingly expanded sense of possibilities...." Maybe that was true for a woman who picked the book up when it first came out, but I was born in 1979 and have always known the possibilities open to me. Times have changed a lot. So many of these excerpts (some of which would have seemed more coherent and interesting if the editors hadn't skipped around so much between the entries; why were all of the entries in between the included ones not included as well?) were so obviously included out of feminist or political motivations, and didn't make me eager to read the full-length books. This was a really laudable effort, but ultimately is like so many other books which came out in this era--laughably dated today.

Rating:
Summary: This book IS a revelation.
Review: I highly recommend Moffat and Painter's selection of diary and journal entries by a wide variety of women. They organize the excerpts according to themes related to love, work, and power. Well-known diarists one would expect to be here are, such as Virginia Woolf, Anne Frank, and Anaïs Nin. But some of the most striking are by women that are not well known, at least in America. Hannah Senesh, who did spying work for the early state of Israel; Carolina Maria de Jesus, a Brazilian who grew up in abject poverty; Martha Martin, who survived the ordeal of being stranded in Alaska and having to give birth by herself--these are a few of the extraordinary women in this book. Reading it is like sitting down with strangers who quickly end up friends--and since so many of them are writing because no one around them could listen, they pour out everything in their hearts and minds. The coeditors have a knack for selecting just the right sequence of entries, making the book more than the sum of its parts. Finally, Painter's afterward, titled "Psychic Bisexuality," caps the book with a thoughtful consideration of the significance of diary writing. Anyone who can appreciate self-expressive writing will profit by reading this book. Vintage is to be thanked for keeping it in print for so long.

Rating:
Summary: This book IS a revelation.
Review: I highly recommend Moffat and Painter's selection of diary and journal entries by a wide variety of women. They organize the excerpts according to themes related to love, work, and power. Well-known diarists one would expect to be here are, such as Virginia Woolf, Anne Frank, and Anaïs Nin. But some of the most striking are by women that are not well known, at least in America. Hannah Senesh, who did spying work for the early state of Israel; Carolina Maria de Jesus, a Brazilian who grew up in abject poverty; Martha Martin, who survived the ordeal of being stranded in Alaska and having to give birth by herself--these are a few of the extraordinary women in this book. Reading it is like sitting down with strangers who quickly end up friends--and since so many of them are writing because no one around them could listen, they pour out everything in their hearts and minds. The coeditors have a knack for selecting just the right sequence of entries, making the book more than the sum of its parts. Finally, Painter's afterward, titled "Psychic Bisexuality," caps the book with a thoughtful consideration of the significance of diary writing. Anyone who can appreciate self-expressive writing will profit by reading this book. Vintage is to be thanked for keeping it in print for so long.

Rating:
Summary: 10 cents
Review: If you get you're hands on this one, as I did as a 13 year old at a thrift store for 10 cents, you'll never let go. Now 20 years later, the entries by these women mean many different things to me. I didn't understand Anais Nin, I do now. I understood Anne Frank, or I thought I did. Then there were all these other wonderfully written pieces by who, I didn't know....Sand, Dostoevsky, Carr, Wordsworth, Sand. I still draw off these women and their love, work, and power as the book is broken into those three parts. I still believe in the next twenty years I'll find something new, and the twenty years after that. I believe my 10 cents went a long way, and whatever monetary value it is worth to you, this is their words for us to keep forever.

Rating:
Summary: 10 cents
Review: If you get you're hands on this one, as I did as a 13 year old at a thrift store for 10 cents, you'll never let go. Now 20 years later, the entries by these women mean many different things to me. I didn't understand Anais Nin, I do now. I understood Anne Frank, or I thought I did. Then there were all these other wonderfully written pieces by who, I didn't know....Sand, Dostoevsky, Carr, Wordsworth, Sand. I still draw off these women and their love, work, and power as the book is broken into those three parts. I still believe in the next twenty years I'll find something new, and the twenty years after that. I believe my 10 cents went a long way, and whatever monetary value it is worth to you, this is their words for us to keep forever.