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jlehman47's review
medium-paced
1.0
Super racist book. Only read if you are prepared to look at it anthropologically about the horrific ways white Americans have viewed indigenous people and other people of color.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Xenophobia, Ableism, Colonisation, Racism, and Fatphobia
erinflight's review
3.0
Giving this book 3 stars is a compromise. Part of this books are five star, others parts are 1 star.
The five star parts are charming. Betty's life alternated between horrible drudgery and moments of terror and delight and she describes all of them equally vividly. I loved the details about chickens and farming that I never knew I didn't know. I loved her descriptions of food and her good natured complaining.
The one star parts are one star because Betty is extremely racist towards Native American people.
An example:
"I didn't like Indians, and the more I saw of them the more I thought what an excellent thing it was to take that beautiful country away from them."
This is probably the worst example in the book, but the attitude is speckled throughout and there are a few chapters where it makes a strong showing.
Still, the reason I think that this doesn't make the book worthy of one star is that, as a modern reader I think reading about this mindset is valuable.
I read memoirs mostly to learn about parts of life I'm unfamiliar with.
And this type of 1950s somewhat historical racism definitely counts. I likely don't have enough knowledge here to say for certain, but while there are definitely people this racist today, I don't think you get much of the completely unselfconscious racism you see in this book. No memoirist today would attempt to publish a book like this, unless there were catering to a very specific audience, and I think that audience wouldn't care much for the parts about chickens. Betty isn't defensive. She seems to have no idea, never even considers, that there might be anything racist or unfair or unjust about her views on Native Americans. She's a normal, mostly kind, person who is awful to a certain group of people and never even starts to realize how awful she's being.
I think I learned more from that than I did from any of the sections about her farm life, though those were much more fun.
So I actually would recommend this book, I think. It's well written, in some parts very good, and the terrible parts are useful in their terribleness.
I still feel odd giving it more than three stars though.
The five star parts are charming. Betty's life alternated between horrible drudgery and moments of terror and delight and she describes all of them equally vividly. I loved the details about chickens and farming that I never knew I didn't know. I loved her descriptions of food and her good natured complaining.
The one star parts are one star because Betty is extremely racist towards Native American people.
An example:
"I didn't like Indians, and the more I saw of them the more I thought what an excellent thing it was to take that beautiful country away from them."
This is probably the worst example in the book, but the attitude is speckled throughout and there are a few chapters where it makes a strong showing.
Still, the reason I think that this doesn't make the book worthy of one star is that, as a modern reader I think reading about this mindset is valuable.
I read memoirs mostly to learn about parts of life I'm unfamiliar with.
And this type of 1950s somewhat historical racism definitely counts. I likely don't have enough knowledge here to say for certain, but while there are definitely people this racist today, I don't think you get much of the completely unselfconscious racism you see in this book. No memoirist today would attempt to publish a book like this, unless there were catering to a very specific audience, and I think that audience wouldn't care much for the parts about chickens. Betty isn't defensive. She seems to have no idea, never even considers, that there might be anything racist or unfair or unjust about her views on Native Americans. She's a normal, mostly kind, person who is awful to a certain group of people and never even starts to realize how awful she's being.
I think I learned more from that than I did from any of the sections about her farm life, though those were much more fun.
So I actually would recommend this book, I think. It's well written, in some parts very good, and the terrible parts are useful in their terribleness.
I still feel odd giving it more than three stars though.
christina_likes_to_read's review
2.0
This book had a lot of bad language. It would have been more enjoyable without it.
eriynali's review
4.0
great memoir/autobiography with delightful descriptions of western settling and quite sarcastic humor. sadly, the times were racist and sexist and brutal, and the author is (knowingly) bigoted. that does not prevent the book from being a very useful snapshot of an era.
mharrison13's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
My 5 year old saw this at the library and recommended it to me. It is filled with somewhat amusing stories but unfortunately is arranged randomly (not linearly) and the author was racist. It was written in 1945 and hasn’t aged well, but it was entertaining.
I enjoyed it enough to add the sequel to my TBR. I hope the neighbors on the next farm are just as crazy, because they were definitely the best parts of the book.
I enjoyed it enough to add the sequel to my TBR. I hope the neighbors on the next farm are just as crazy, because they were definitely the best parts of the book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abortion, Racism, and Sexism
jeslyncat's review
3.0
I love Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. I wish I'd lived with her.
These books were the first time in my childhood I learned that chapter books can make you laugh and cry.
These books were the first time in my childhood I learned that chapter books can make you laugh and cry.
tnt307's review against another edition
4.0
Úsměvné čtení, zajímavé zážitky, hezká oddychovka.
Mnohokrát jsem během čtení přemýšlela, jestli bych taky byla schopna života někde v "divočině". Nejsem si tím jistá, ale občas je to lákavá představa.
Mnohokrát jsem během čtení přemýšlela, jestli bych taky byla schopna života někde v "divočině". Nejsem si tím jistá, ale občas je to lákavá představa.
ridgewaygirl's review against another edition
3.0
And then winter settled down and I realized that defeat, like morale, is a lot of little things.
Betty MacDonald remembers the first two years of her marriage, in which she and her husband create and run a chicken ranch located in the wilds of Washington state. Originally published in 1945, the writing style reminded me of Jean Webster (who wrote Daddy-Long-Legs), with its mix of charm and dry wit. MacDonald finds the humor in any situation and is as willing to poke fun at herself as she is at the people around her. She has to fight to adjust to rural living and to the hardships and constant work involved, but she's game.
There is one aspect that mars this outrageously delightful memoir; MacDonald mixes in a large helping of racism aimed at the local Native Americans, which culminates in her being glad that their land was being taken from them. Even her husband asks her to take it down a notch, and given that the flaws she sees in them are exactly the same flaws she sees in many of the men around her, it's surprising that she never notices that she only sees white people as individually flawed. I'd like to give her the benefit of simply being a product of her own time, but as her own husband asks her to take it down a notch, it seems she was bigoted even by the standards of her time.
I loved this book until I didn't. I can see why it's been allowed to sink into obscurity and at the same time I'm sorry about that -- it's such a vivid, insightfully rendered picture of a specific time and place.
Betty MacDonald remembers the first two years of her marriage, in which she and her husband create and run a chicken ranch located in the wilds of Washington state. Originally published in 1945, the writing style reminded me of Jean Webster (who wrote Daddy-Long-Legs), with its mix of charm and dry wit. MacDonald finds the humor in any situation and is as willing to poke fun at herself as she is at the people around her. She has to fight to adjust to rural living and to the hardships and constant work involved, but she's game.
There is one aspect that mars this outrageously delightful memoir; MacDonald mixes in a large helping of racism aimed at the local Native Americans, which culminates in her being glad that their land was being taken from them. Even her husband asks her to take it down a notch, and given that the flaws she sees in them are exactly the same flaws she sees in many of the men around her, it's surprising that she never notices that she only sees white people as individually flawed. I'd like to give her the benefit of simply being a product of her own time, but as her own husband asks her to take it down a notch, it seems she was bigoted even by the standards of her time.
I loved this book until I didn't. I can see why it's been allowed to sink into obscurity and at the same time I'm sorry about that -- it's such a vivid, insightfully rendered picture of a specific time and place.