Cheers to Memoirs by Women!

On my recent backpacking adventure to the Middle East, I carried two items of entertainment with me to keep me occupied on long flights or bus rides- my iPod and my books. My iPod tends to have a lot of bands with male singers...Beck, The Shins, Led Zeppelin. However, my reading tends to be the opposite. To balance my boy bands, I read two memoirs written by women. The two books I chose were perfect because I needed to identify with something familiar while trekking in very unfamiliar territories. Although the authors, subject, and tone of the two books are very different, both memoirs have something in common- independent women learning to truly live independently.

The first book I read on the trip I actually devoured. I discovered it off of a website from my favorite independent bookstore in Chicago called "Women and Children First" (Andersonville). There is a link on the website of this bookstore with recommendations from the avid readers who work there. The recommender I align with most is Linda and here's her link: Linda's Recommendations. Not too long ago, Linda posted a recommendation for a book called Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress: Tales of Growing Up Groovy and Clueless that I had been meaning to read for a while.
I am so thankful I finally picked this book up. In terms of a book that makes you laugh, is easy to read, and is a page-turner, this is THE BOOK f0r a twenty or thirty-something year old. Susan Jane Gilman gives us a memoir of her unique and yet easily identifiable life. In the forward of this book, Gilman explains that she wanted a memoir about a "coming-of-age" story that isn't focused on getting a man. She writes, "There's so much more to women's lives (than getting a man) that's worthy of attention and ridicule." Thus, the book isn't your Sex and the City narrative.

The memoir starts us with Gilman at the age of five recounting how she wants to be a shining star despite being an average five year old and ends with Gilman in her mid-thirties still learning very unexpected lessons about herself. Each chapter is a different stage of life- childhood, adolescence, college years, post-college years (of confusion), and womanhood. At each of these stages, Gilman, through hilarious story-telling, weaves the reader to the ultimate lesson learned as a woman. Without giving too much away, I believe the ultimate lesson that Gilman learns through these stages is humility. Although my own life stories are very different (I did not grow up in a hippie family on the Upper West Side of NYC), I noticed I went through the same lessons as Gilman in my own life. The last stage in the book shows us Gilman as a secure woman, but still learning a lesson for which the title of the book is written for. This book has been compared to others, such as The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing, which I'm interested in devouring next.

The other book I read on this trip is actually a memoir about traveling. I found it on the shelves of the Hebron Hostel in the Old City of Jerusalem. I donated my BUST magazine and, in exchange, I took this book with me. The second memoir is by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Alice Steinbach, and the title of her book is Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Women.
The idea that intrigued me most about this book is the fact that Alice Steinbach left her entire life to live abroad for a year...and she did it alone. While putting her extremely successful career as a journalist for the Baltimore Sun on hold, Steinbach went to Europe alone to gain insight on her life as an independent woman. During her year abroad, she lived in Paris, London, and traveled through Italy. The memoir made me very nostalgic of my own independent traveling through Europe. Steinbach and I happen to share travels through the same cities. I loved remembering these cities and their images through Steinbach's beautiful writing. We also happen to have traveled through these cities alone. The summer after graduating from college, I left Chicago to backpack Europe by myself. I thought then, and still feel now today, that the journey was a huge statement in who I was as a person and an independent woman. Steinbach seems to have the same kind of liberation.

Another idea I think about that this book brought to the forefront of my mind is traveling or living abroad at the end of my career (or at the beginning of my life as a free, wiser woman). With Gilman's memoir, I laughed at her past and identified with her tales of being in her twenties. With Steinbach's memoir, I think about the future. Steingbach writes from the point-of-view of an older female. Her writing is not so fluffy and humorous- it is full of remembrance of the past with a light longing and, at times, seriousness. In the memoir, Steinbach explains that she is able to leave her normal life because it is the right time for her: she established her career, her sons are grown men, and she is no longer married. Another way to think about this is Steinbach is able to leave her life because she is older. This makes me think about all the different opportunities I may have later in life when I am ready to think about life beyond my career and children.

These two memoirs by women remind me that females, at any stage in life, still try to figure out the balance of being feminist and independent. The books are a reminder that, as Steinbach would say, women adapt and move forward at any stage in life.