LIFE OF A READER
JUDY NEWMAN
A First Name Basis On the eve of Women’s History Month, I started thinking about the role of women in my reading life and realized that when I was a kid, most of the books I read and loved were by—and about—women and girls. I grew up in an era of disruptive feminism. As an adult, I read and appreciate the work of the now-called “second wave” feminists that began in the 1960s: Gloria, Betty, Angela, and Erica. But as a kid, set against the frightening backdrop of Kent State, the Vietnam War on the TV in the kitchen each night, and the threat of a world leader pushing the dreaded “red button” and sending us all into oblivion—I was pretty terrified. Before I understood the role of activism in society, I was scared by these loud feminist voices. My mother worked as a teacher, then as a social worker. My grandmother worked as a piano teacher. My own teachers were women. Miss Bartel was the principal of
Marching for women’s liberation. © Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images
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Story Monsters Ink | March 2019 | StoryMonsters.com
the John Ward School I attended, and even though she “went to hell” in an underground school anthem, she had real power and was revered and respected. I didn’t see any limits to what I could accomplish. Obviously, I didn’t get it. But now decades later, I realize something. While I was too young to be out protesting (I felt so self-conscious even trying on a bra in Filene’s dressing room, let alone burn one in public!) and while at the time I didn’t see what “women’s lib” had to do with me, I must have internalized these feminist messages and expressed my interest and concern in my own way. Looking back, I recognize virtually all of the books I read and loved as a kid featured two types of feminist heroes: real-life women who were the subjects of the Childhood of Famous Americans biographies; and a group of outspoken, self-determined characters who were usually around my age and fictional.
I loved reading books by these women—Beverly Cleary, Louisa May Alcott, Astrid Lindgren, E.L. Konigsburg, and Louise Fitzhugh. From left to right: © Terry Smith/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images;© Culture Club/Getty Images; © ullsteinbild/ullsteinbild/Getty Images; © AP Photo/Florida Times-Union, Jon Fletcher; © John Cech/Recess
