Notes from an Incomplete Revolution: Real Life Since Feminism

by Meredith Maran

"What we had in mind, when my friends and I threw away our bras, was power.  We wanted the world to widen to women.  We wanted more respect, higher wages, better marriages than our mothers', bigger lives than any generation of women had ever known."

"We had big plans for men, too.  The more optimistic among us envisioned a new breed of men who would cook and cry, go to therapy and diaper babies, assist us in achieving the multiple orgasms we so deserved, and then pop out of bed to clean the bathroom."

Meredith Maran's first book, What It's Like to Live Now , was an amazingly candid and often hilarious memoir of her journey from a sixties idealist to a nineties new woman, complete with two teenage sons, a female lover, and a hefty mortgage.  Now, with the same reckless honesty, she returns to explore life--hers and ours, female and male--in the wake of the women's movement.

Today we earn more money than our mothers did, at jobs they never dreamed of doing.  We are less likely to stay in unhappy marriages, to bear unwanted
children.  But have we achieved what we set out to accomplish?  Do women--whether they're twenty or forty or sixty--feel more in control of their lives?  Has feminism made us more--or less--fulfilled in our relationships with men and with each other?

"I'd marched for reproductive rights, but I still mourned the baby I aborted when I was twenty.  I'd been in a lesbian relationship for eleven years, but when my car broke down I still longed for a husband.  I'd picketed beauty pageants, but I'd been secretly dieting for fifteen years."

With her keen eye for contradictions, Meredith Maran finds our new realities in surprising on a racquetball court facing an unyielding female opponent; before a classroom of high school students, openly discussing her bisexuality; in a courtroom during a sexual abuse trial.  Through her singular experiences she illuminates the issues millions of women confront her thorny relationship with her mother; the politics of flirting; the struggle to raise caring, responsible children in the face of racism and violence.

This is writing we need--alive with humor and emotion and totally engaged with the life of our times.

Genres: Feminism, Fiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published March 31, 1997

About the author

MEREDITH MARAN is the author of more than a dozen nonfiction books, including Why We Write About Ourselves, Why We Write, and My Lie; and the acclaimed 2012 novel, A Theory of Small Earthquakes. She's a book critic and essayist for newspapers and magazines including the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Salon.com. The recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo, and a member of the National Book Critics Circle, Meredith lives in a restored historic bungalow in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's an interesting read that raises some poignant questions about feminism. It's written from the first person perspective and details many relationships in Meredith's life -- her partner, her sons, her ex-husband, her lovers. It's emotionally honest and made me think.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book but I just found it hard to relate to. I think there is some benefit in analysing your past and your relationships along with your politics, but whether it requires a book to be published about what you think and feel I'm not sure...

I found it interesting from a feminist perspective, but her life is so different to mine and her experiences so different that on a personal level I couldn't really relate to a lot of it.

[Kati · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel really ambivalent about this book. Which might really just be me saying I feel ambivalent about second wave feminism. The writing is fine. I did read it somewhat voraciously, so maybe that says something good about it?

[Carrie]

books I've read,essays

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book. I couldn't relate to much of it, but I appreciated the personal perspective on early feminism.

[Miss Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it