Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 26, 1995 TAG: 9503290097
SECTION: BOOK PAGE: F-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY MARIAN C. COURTNEY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Most of us have heard of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emily Dickinson and Clara Barton. But how many of us have heard of Louise Watson? Or Jesse Daniel Ames? Or Iris Rivera?
If these names are unfamiliar, reading "What Every American Should Know About Women's History" will enlighten you. Christine Lunardini has compiled 200 events between 1607 and 1993 that either illustrate contributions women have made or describe occurrences having significant effects on women's lives. She apologizes for limiting the book's selections but emphasizes that the need to leave some things out shows how vast women's contributions have been.
"The amazing thing is that they managed to accomplish so much with so many limitations to their own personal freedom," she writes in the introduction. Among many other little-knows facts, the book clarifies the legacies of the three people mentioned above:
A Bryn Mawr graduate, Louise Watson joined the Guaranty Company in 1917 (which later became J. P. Morgan/Guaranty) - but unlike male employees, she had to pay for her own training. She became Guaranty's leading salesperson.
Troubled by lynchings of black men falsely accused of raping white women, in 1930 Jesse Ames founded the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching through which she worked to stop the vigilante violence.
Iris Rivera's supervisor fired her in 1977 for refusing to make his coffee, thus bringing the issue of unprofessional treatment of women in the work place to the fore.
The author includes men's contributions to women's history as well. For example, Robert Dale Owen wrote the first book published in America on the subject of birth control. Called "Moral Physiology" and published in 1830, the book advocated reproductive choice, fewer children and better education.
Readers absorb a sense of women's struggles, since the book describes failures as well as successes. In the February 1913, Paterson strike, for example, mill workers in New Jersey, primarily women, participated to protest an increase in work with no increase in pay. Despite the strike's length and support, the workers returned by summer's end without having gained any concessions from the owners.
Lunardini includes little known-facts about famous women that make them more real to readers. Eleanor Roosevelt held news conferences to which she invited only female journalists, thereby helping women who wanted into break into the male-dominated profession. Pearl S. Buck, who was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature and who won a Pulitzer Prize for "The Good Earth," created a foundation to care for unwanted children of Asian mothers and American fathers and adopted six Asian-American children herself.
Structuring her book so that sections can be read individually, Lunardini makes it useful as a reference. Busy readers will appreciate the conciseness of each entry. This brevity, however, occasionally contributes to a lack of detail. When the author writes that Dorothy Thompson became the foremost advocate of U.S. intervention to stop Nazi aggression, her influence remains unclear. Was she the primary advocate in the media community, among Europeans, among women or in some other context?
In a section on Amelia Earhart, the author states that Earhart was not only flying around the world but was on a mission to monitor the military buildup of the Japanese in the Pacific. Whether Earhart's flight had a dual purpose has generated argument and controversy. Some explanation by the author on what proof the statement is based would add validity.
Lest readers think "What Every American Should Know About Women's History" lacks a touch of whimsy, some light-hearted information is interspersed with the serious. Readers will learn about the introduction of bloomers, about Annie Oakley joining Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show and about the first American women's amateur golf championship.
Combining the myriad issues affecting women, including education, family, work, sports, politics, cultural life and social reform in an easy-to-read format, Lunardini's book whets one's appetite to learn more about a history that has largely been ignored.
Marian C. Courtney lives in Charlottesville.
by CNB