Written by Herself: Volume I: Autobiographies of American Women: An Anthology | 
 enlarge | Author: Jill Ker Conway
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
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Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 251337
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 688
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 0679736336
Dewey Decimal Number: 920.720973
EAN: 9780679736332
ASIN: 0679736336
Publication Date: November 17, 1992
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Jill Ker Conway (The Road from Coorain ) edits this sterling selection of autobiographical excerpts by 25 American women. Among them are artists, scientists, doctors, writers, and reformers, all well chosen though not necessarily well known. Physician Anne Walter Fearn writes of decades dispensing Western medicine in China and struggling with her husband, a God-fearing medical missionary who was "born to give orders just as definitely as I was born not to take them." The heart-rending narrative of former slave Harriet Ann Jacob, who tells of abortive and finally successful attempts to free herself and her children segues into Maya Angelou's more widely read contemporary account of doggedly soliciting sex as a teen uncertain of her sexual identity and hoping to be ushered into "that strange and exotic land of frills and femininity."
Product Description
The bestselling author of The Road from Coorain presents an extraordinarily powerful anthology of the autobiographical writings of 25 women, literary predecessors and contemporaries that include Jane Addams, Zora Neale Hurst, Harriet Jacobs, Ellen Glasgow, Maya Angelou, Sara Josephine Baker, Margaret Mead, Gloria Steinem, and Maxine Hong Kingston.
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| Customer Reviews:
Intrigued as well as informed me September 16, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This anthology includes both previously published and previously unpublished memoirs, some by women whose names I recognized and others by women whose names I'd never heard before. Editor Jill Ker Conway, author of The Road from Coorain, has selected a true cross section. Physicians trained in the days when "ladies" simply didn't enter that profession, scientists, activists, and scholars, each writer speaks powerfully in her own voice; and the result is a work that intrigued as well as informed me. I'm looking forward to reading the second volume.
Powerful and inspirational June 29, 2002
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
I discovered this book on my own, no one told me about it. I bought it mostly on the strength of Jill Ker Conway's writings. I trust her judgement.
This book is now at the top of my favorites. It is a compilation of twenty-five autobigraphical sketches, written with truth, genius and verve, each one of them. I had to take them one at a time, letting each one digest before I went on. Each time I thought, phew, the next one won't match up and yet it did. The voices and stories are extraordinary. I am going to buy it as a gift over and over again. It is more than a jewel. It is a necklace of gems.
Brilliant compilation of women's stories December 8, 1999
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
Jill Ker Conway is a good writer and editor. She has collected here a group of American women's stories, all of which are fascinating. Before each memoir, she writes a short explanation, but it is the women's stories that stick with you. The ones that stuck with me most were the one of the escaping slave woman, who hid in an attic crawl space for almost a year, so desperate was she for freedom -- and the one written by Margaret Sanger. I give this book frequently as a gift to young women -- for Bat Mitzvah, graduation, to mark some important milestone in their lives. By reading about other women's struggles to define their lives, you learn more about your own.
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