One of NPR’s Best Books of the Year“Straight’s memoir is a lyric social history of her multiracial clan in Riverside that explores the bonds of love and survival that bind them, with a particular emphasis on the women’s stories . . . The aftereffect of all these disparate stories juxtaposed in a single epic is remarkable. Its resonance lingers for days after reading.” —San Francisco ChronicleIn … Francisco Chronicle
In the Country of Women is a valuable social history and a personal narrative that reads like a love song to America and indomitable women. In inland Southern California, near the desert and the Mexican border, Susan Straight, a self–proclaimed book nerd, and Dwayne Sims, an African American basketball player, started dating in high school. After college, they married and drove to Amherst, Massachusetts, where Straight met her teacher and mentor, James Baldwin, who encouraged her to write. Once back in Riverside, at driveway barbecues and fish fries with the large, close–knit Sims family, Straight—and eventually her three daughters—heard for decades the stories of Dwayne’s female ancestors. Some women escaped violence in post–slavery Tennessee, some escaped murder in Jim Crow Mississippi, and some fled abusive men. Straight’s mother–in–law, Alberta Sims, is the descendant at the heart of this memoir. Susan’s family, too, reflects the hardship and resilience of women pushing onward—from Switzerland, Canada, and the Colorado Rockies to California.
A Pakistani word, biraderi, is one Straight uses to define a complex system of kinship and clan—those who become your family. An entire community helped raise her daughters. Of her three girls, now grown and working in museums and the entertainment industry, Straight writes, “The daughters of our ancestors carry in their blood at least three continents. We are not about borders. We are about love and survival.”
“Certain books give off the sense that you won’t want them to end, so splendid the writing, so lyrical the stories. Such is the case with Southern California novelist Susan Straight’s new memoir, In the Country of Women . . . Her vibrant pages are filled with people of churned–together blood culled from scattered immigrants and native peoples, indomitable women and their babies. Yet they never succumb . . . Straight gives us permission to remember what went before with passion and attachment.” ––Los Angeles Times
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Enjoyed this memoir by literary luminary Susan Straight as she writes about the generations of women whose blood combined to create her three biracial daughters in Riverside, California…A place people go to begin again. Many thought provoking moments in this carefully researched book spanning the whole United States. In a way, In the Country of Women is a universal one. We all came from somewhere, and ended up somewhere. Susan just cared enough to write that story for her family in an engaging tapestry.
Our contemporary literary canon overflows with memoirs written by women who have experienced and overcome adversity of all kinds. The very best of these stories are about something bigger than the authors themselves, throwing light on themes like prejudice, domestic violence, substance abuse, and religion. Susan Straight’s dazzling memoir breaks that mold completely. Written as a love letter for her three mixed-race daughters, this book describes not only Straight’s own life and her unique journey to become a writer, but the many women in her family, and in her husband’s family, who together provide a chorus of love and heartbreak as they build and raise families. Through Straight’s impassioned prose, these women sing stories of surviving the challenges that women of all races and cultures had to face in forging a future in this nation where all of our daughters, no matter what race, color, or culture they might be, have voices that can, and will be, heard. If you only read one book this year, make it this one.
I went to grammar school in the same city Susan Straight lives in. Her depiction of the city, the richness with which she draws the characters is compelling. The reverence for the family she joined, and for her own family is genuine. I lived a life similar to hers when I moved to Chicago at 16 and was immersed in the African-American community. The stories in this book convey an authentic experience not many can represent. Bravo!
this is an american story, a california story, a woman’s story, about women. the writing is superb, i could see, smell, an feel every description. i loved this so much i bought copies for all my girlfriends. susan sraight has a bunch of others stories to tell, and i intend to read them all.
Not exactly my type of book. I picked it because I’m a relative new resident of this area and I hoped I would gain some insight.
I loved this book, loved what Straight did, researching the lives of her and her husband’s forebears, including photos of some of them, giving the reader prose that often reads like poetry, while relating the lives of these people, their struggles and how they or their progeny made it to Riverside, California where Straight was raised and where she married her African American husband, Dwayne Sims. They had three daughters, who Straight reveres and sees as the future of all those who came before, all those with their tired backs or poor homes, their dreams deferred and yet the tight bonds of love that kept them living and moving and growing their families. Californians will walk some of the same pathways with Straight as she tours the California missions with her children–they must know their history, they must honor the mountains, the eucalyptus and pepper trees, the canyons and rivers. It’s all there in this beautiful book.