In this coming-of-age memoir, Sharon takes you with her on a nail-biting adventure through the early 1970s after leaving her sheltered home life at sixteen years old to join the hippies. Yearning for freedom, she lands in an adult world for which she is unprepared, and must learn quickly in order to survive. As Sharon navigates the US and Canada—whether by hitchhiking, bicycle, or the back of a … the back of a motorcycle—she experiences love and heartbreak, discovers who she can and cannot trust, and awakens to the Women’s Liberation movement while living in a rural off-grid commune. In this colorful memoir, she reflects upon the changes that reshaped her during that decade, and how the ways in which she and her peers threw off the rules meant to keep women in their place has transformed and empowered the lives of girls and women today.
more
Written with radical candor and the power of hindsight, the pages of NO RULES are explosive and colorful. Between the covers of this book, author Sharon Dukett shares a brutally honest look at real-life survival as a runaway teen and the roles that sex and drugs played in discovering herself—and coming into her own—during the counter-culture of the 1970s. I highly recommend this five-star read.
This memoir from the ‘70’s is a circuitous coming of age story of a young girl, angry with her controlling and conservative parents for not valuing her as a full human being. Running away from home long before she knows who she is, and hitchhiking with wild abandon, we are concerned for her safety. Clueless and broke, she looks to men to take care of her, and sometimes they spectacularly don’t. We are brought along as she finally learns to shut out the voices in her head that tell her that she is not capable. In the end, with the help of popular books of the time offering spiritual guidance and others by women identified writers, she transforms into a strong feminist woman. one who lets us know that now “on most days, if you asked me, I would tell you I am happy.” A good reminder that books can help us find our way. The feeling of the times are well-told and unmistakable.
This memoir begins in Connecticut in 1971 when Sharon, at age 16, decides to get out of her house filled with rules and unsympathetic parents and run away to California to join the hippie culture. It’s the story of the ups and downs of her life until she left her wandering life style and started college.
When she arrives in California she is thrown into an adult world that she isn’t prepared for. There are lots of drugs, lots of sex and no stability to her life. She realizes that she has to learn quickly or be left behind. After several years of this lifestyle, she gets involved with the women’s movement and realizes that she can make her own decisions instead of some man telling her what to do. Her book is very honest and she admits she made some mistakes but who doesn’t make mistakes as they grow up. I enjoyed her honesty and her bravery at breaking so many rules along the way. She was very brave to make the changes that she did at such a young age. I can’t relate to much of her story but I appreciate her sharing it with the world.
From an upbringing of a conservative Catholic in Connecticut to a commune counterculture in California, Sharon Dukett’s memoir is an enlightening adventure back to the 70’s as a young woman learns and discovers herself and her role as a woman. This was an unapologetic, brave and a wonderful journey of both life as Dukett learns invaluable life-lessons, and travel to different places in a fast paced read l really enjoyed!
I loved this memoir and highly recommend it!!
Engaging.
With No Rules, Dukett gives us the reality around the teenage fantasy of being so mad at your mother you run away from home. Since it’s 1971 and dropping out is a generational pastime, her long journey to independence is peppered with the familiar signs of the counterculture times. With uncanny recall, Dukett chronicles virtually every joint, hit of acid, record, crush, lover, right down to the number of loaves of bread she had to bake in one her communes. Relive it or experience it for the first time at her side. You know you want to.
I don’t know about you, but when I hear references to the 60s and 70s, my thoughts veer toward a rosy-hazed Dazed and Confused setting: everything laced with flowers, love and drugs, and bell bottoms. So of course I was all over it when the opportunity arose to read and review Sharon Dukett’s memoir.
Needless to say, SD has shown me that there was a lot more to life during that time period. This has been proving to be one of those memoirs that reminds me why I love reading them so much: an in-depth look at life behind the curtain of a time and place I’ll never be able to experience myself.
No Rules [She Writes Press, June 2, 2020] is a groovy romp through yesteryear that takes us on a radical through 1970s counterculture and the early days of the modern feminist movement.
Colorful, adventurous, and transformative, No Rules recounts one woman’s journey from her conservative, Catholic upbringing in Connecticut to a full-blown child of the Seventies. Dukett’s narrative is expressive and emotional, giving her reader a first-hand glance back in time and alongside her journey into 1970s counterculture. The ride is bumpy, full of lessons, colorful experiences, and even colorful characters. It’s also unflinchingly raw and unapologetic, making Duckett’s journey immersive and powerfully resonant as she passes on the lessons she learned surviving in an era that transformed society’s expectations for girls and women.
From the moment sixteen-year-old Dukett decides to get into a car with her ex-boyfriend Eddie and her sister Anne and head for California, No Rules is a thrill ride of a memoir. Her journey takes her first to Venice, California, then onto a series of adventures across the country—including living in a commune!—and into a world that is not just miles apart geographically but totally foreign to her upbringing. By the end of her journey, not only is Dukett a transformed woman, but a presence that feels more like a friend than a storyteller.
Though she takes us back in time to a decade long passed, Dukett’s fascinatingly fresh memories and lessons echo those that are still top of mind in today’s rapidly changing and redefining society. Some of her experiences may not be palatable to everyone, but without them Duckett’s bravery, conviction, and risk-taking would lose their potency. Her storytelling is exactly the kind of coming of age adventure that many young people dream of having, and chock full of precisely the important messages and reminders we need today—primarily to stay alive, to keep fighting, to forgive ourselves for our mistakes, and to never give up.
No Rules by Sharon Dukett is an incredible memoir. The setting is in Connecticut (where I grew up ) and is set in the early 1970’s . There are alternating timelines between the 70’s and to the future.
Sharon explores the Hippie lifestyle .
At times, I forgot I was reading a memoir and this was a testament to the author’s excellent writing.
It was really interesting reading not only Sharon’s experience but also the time period she wrote about.
I recommend this poignant memoir.
Thank you to #booktrib, She Writes Press and Tina Meyers “Loves To Read” (FB) for this book.
Quite a wild ride with this book. I’d never be able to leave my family or my house at 16 and travel around the country hitchhiking, finding employment (when she could), shacking up with strangers/men and living on a commune, and anywhere else she could find with anyone she could to make ends meet when she was ages 16-18. I wasn’t mature enough but obviously she did it and seemed to enjoy it for the most part. Her parents weren’t happy that she left home without their knowledge but she was living with her sister Anne for a while who was 21 at the time. I was dizzy with all the places she was going to and ended up for short periods of time.
Thank you Sharon Dukett for your honest memoir, your journey, and for the interesting trip through the 1970s and the hippie era. I grew up in the 1970s but Sharon is older than me.
Linda’s Book Obsession Reviews “No Rules: A Memoir” by Sharon Dukett, She Writes Press, July 6, 2020, for Suzy Approved Book Tours
Sharon Dukett has written an intriguing, entertaining, and adventurous memoir “No Rules: A Memoir”. The timeline is around 1971 in Connecticut, when Sharon is 16 years old, and become disappointed and frustrated. The memoir goes to the past and future when it pertains to Sharon’s experiences and memories. At times this almost reads like a novel that is fiction.
In 1971, Sharon’s parents believe that boys should go to college and it isn’t necessary to spend the money for girls to be able to go to college because their goals should be to get married and have children. Sharon’s older sister was able to leave their family home, and Sharon is determined to investigate and explore the world. She is interested in ‘hippies” and their views on different aspects of life. She leaves for California, and hitch-hikes and partakes in many of the cultural activities.
Sharon starts to realize that this life is difficult and that in order to survive, you have to be more careful. This is a unique insight into the early women’s movement and the dangers and freedom of doing what you want to do. I would recommend this thought-provoking memoir.
I was utterly captivated by the words from this no holds barred memoir looking back on Sharon Dukett’s life growing up and breaking free from her parents rule to navigate the world as a free spirit.
Her stories are ones that will shock you, make you feel pity and make you feel proud. It’s powerful storytelling tells you of one person fighting within themselves to find happiness, freedom & the rights of equality, all while maturing on her own from a child into a woman.
Sharon ran away from home with her sister, Anne in 1971 as a sixteen year old wanting to live free like hippies. She no longer could live under the strict rules and unfair thinking their parents had entrapped them into believing were to be what their lives were supposed to be like. Wanting freedom to be themselves and go against the norm of what the world was like in those days, they decided to head to California.
In California they lived off the little that Anne brought in with her job. They hitch hike to get around, meet a ton of new people, both good and bad and Sharon experiences life as an adult which she isn’t quite ready for. Drugs are handed and taken like candy and protesting are the events they participate in to stand up for causes they believe in.
Eventually, Anne returns home to their parents while Sharon travels about the US and Canada. Close calls with drugs, men, love and relationships all leave Sharon searching you feel whole. The temporary highs eventually always lead to something not working out leaving her depressed.
After renouncing her Catholic upbringing, she finds faith again and it fulfills a part of her sense of self. She reunited with her family under an agreement where she is allowed to continue to travel. Along this long path her life is filled with hippies, drugs, sex and wild events that all lead up to the women she has become today.
The stories are fabulous and is told in a continual timeline and watch her growth was astounding. I really enjoyed reading this book. Don’t let this one slip by because it’s a definite must read.
Enjoyable memoir of a young woman in the 70s who didn’t live life on the sidelines.
This book reads as if you’re sitting with a good friend while they recount in vivid detail memories of growing up in the midst of the turbulent early 1970s. Prepare for some late nights – I often found the book difficult to put down.
The author takes you with her as she escapes the constructs of her parent’s view of the ‘right path’ for a young woman. Her future, if she were to remain at home was clear and Sharon yearned for more. Her older sister offers her a portal to a different life as a free young woman in California and Sharon makes the decision to run. They arrive in California and experience the hippie lifestyle and all it has to offer. It seemed as if I was given a ‘behind the scenes’ look at what was going on in the photos recently published about this time period.
It was great fun to ‘tag along’ and see life through Sharon’s young and inexperienced eyes. ‘Rules’ take on a different spin as the book progresses. Initially Sharon rejected the rules imposed by her parents. Later in the book societal rules come into play and she becomes aware of the women’s movement. We get to experience the author’s maturity as she discovers her true self in this coming of age memoir.
Personally I found the book a thought-provoking read from different perspectives- as a woman who grew up during these times, and as a mother who has raised daughters. As such I often experienced and considered Sharon’s decisions from entirely different viewpoints. I was also reminded, sometimes in vivid detail, of memories of my own youth.
I highly recommend reading this book if you are interested in what it was like be a hippie in the 1970s, if you enjoy reading about the trials and tribulations of a young woman coming of age, or if you simply want to recall what it’s like to be a teenager.
I highly recommend the memoir and “coming of age” book No Rules, by Sharon Dukett. No Rules is a riveting story about the 70s counterculture and a young girl’s journey toward independence. It’s a compelling chronology of adventure, excitement and despair as Sharon grapples with drugs, relationships, and a transient lifestyle. She is “every woman” trying to find her place in life, breaking free of cultural norms, and ultimately learning to recognize her own worth. A must read, a page-turner.