Banned in the 1920s, a University of Chicago grad's fiery feminist memoir has been reissued, making

[TexasTowelie]

Banned in the 1920s, a University of Chicago grad’s fiery feminist memoir has been reissued, making it widely available for the 1st time


Once described as able to “fight her weight in wildcat,” University of Chicago graduate Gertrude Beasley came out swinging in her 1925 memoir, “My First Thirty Years.”

In the first sentence, she accused her father of raping her mother. By page 2, she was relating her first real memory: a sexual assault by her eldest brother when she was only about 4 years old.

Beasley’s blistering account of poverty and abuse on the Texas frontier was banned for “obscenity” in the 1920s, despite an admiring review in the New Yorker. Within two years, Beasley, a journalist with a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, was committed to a Long Island psychiatric hospital where she would remain for the rest of her life.

But against the odds, the frank and feminist book at the center of the firestorm has lived on, finding safe harbor in academic libraries, and winning ardent fans such as Larry McMurtry, author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel “Lonesome Dove.”

Read more: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-feminist-classic-rediscovered-tt-1005-20211007-atz5zlduijfzhil4pwdxfen5z4-story.html

[Pachamama]

1. In previous centuries she would have been called a witch and burned at the stake for speaking truth

In the 1920’s they called her writings obscene and committed her to a psychiatric institution as if she was insane when all she did was speak the truth.

Now almost 100 years later, women are called other names and they still are trying to silence us and control us.

I am sad that sister Gertrude Beasley isn’t alive now to see her writings and to be speaking truth to power and marching along side all of us.

Rest in power Gertude.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. Thank you for posting. . . . nt

[thucythucy]

3. Institutions like Central Islip (the "Long Island institution" where Beasley was incarcerated)

were more about social control of women and girls, LGBTQ, people of color and other oppressed groups than they were about treatment. This includes especially people with disabilities, which the eugenics movement (which was predominant at the time) saw as a threat to racial genetic purity.

We're still suffering from the effects of this toxic belief system and the trauma it caused to millions.

[NJCher]

4. quote

This quote from the article:

There was a great quote (from Gertrude) about the (Chicago Public Schools superintendent Ella Flagg Young):

“It was my idea of a good time to see men afraid of a woman.”



However, overall this is a damned sad story: so much talent extinguished. Of course, it is logical to think that they put her away because of what she dared to say. The observation of one of the publishers that she had endured so much and didn't psychologically break seem pertinent: so why then?