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A review by pattydsf
In the Country of Women by Susan Straight
4.0
”Our women were not in history class, or film or the literature of the ‘canon.’ Our women survived the men who survived the cannons of war, and those were hard men. We hung out with hard men. Weak men. Good men. We married them. We got the babies. The violence. The guns. More babies. The laundry. The pots. Dancing. The pigs. The barter – sex and beds and sheets. The chickens. The bread.
We kept the nation alive.
The women who came before you, my daughters, were legends. Their flights lasted decades, treks that covered America, after they arrived here from the continents of Africa and Europe and married into the indigenous peoples of this continent…”
I don’t know what got me interested in this memoir. I remember some of Straight’s novels. They always looked interesting, but there are always too many books. For whatever reason this book found me, I am profoundly grateful. This is a world that only Straight could take me to, I could have never gotten here on my own.
Straight married a young man from her neighborhood soon after high school. What she didn’t know was she was marrying into a clan of fantastic women who loved hard and survived much. Fortunately for Straight’s three daughters and her readers, Straight paid close attention to the storied of her new family. Not only did she listen, but she did research on her own to put the pieces together. Then she wrote it all down for her daughters.
How Straight got from writing a family history for her children to sharing that story with the rest of the world, I don’t know. However, I am so glad I got to meet this amazing group of matriarchs. This book is wonderful, well-told and an adventure that has to be true – no one could make this all up. Thank you Straight and the Sims family for sharing.
We kept the nation alive.
The women who came before you, my daughters, were legends. Their flights lasted decades, treks that covered America, after they arrived here from the continents of Africa and Europe and married into the indigenous peoples of this continent…”
I don’t know what got me interested in this memoir. I remember some of Straight’s novels. They always looked interesting, but there are always too many books. For whatever reason this book found me, I am profoundly grateful. This is a world that only Straight could take me to, I could have never gotten here on my own.
Straight married a young man from her neighborhood soon after high school. What she didn’t know was she was marrying into a clan of fantastic women who loved hard and survived much. Fortunately for Straight’s three daughters and her readers, Straight paid close attention to the storied of her new family. Not only did she listen, but she did research on her own to put the pieces together. Then she wrote it all down for her daughters.
How Straight got from writing a family history for her children to sharing that story with the rest of the world, I don’t know. However, I am so glad I got to meet this amazing group of matriarchs. This book is wonderful, well-told and an adventure that has to be true – no one could make this all up. Thank you Straight and the Sims family for sharing.