Little Syllables: The Blog
Review - Keeping Family Secrets by Margaret K. Nelson
I received a free review copy from Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
Keeping Family Secrets: Shame and Silence in Memoirs from the 1950s is a nonfiction book that felt more like a summary of more extensive data. Nelson takes several big issues around the theme of shame and silence in the 1950s and then pulls details from a variety of memoirs to explain each issue. She addresses the institutionalization of children with disabilities, same-sex attraction among boys, unwed pregnancies, Communism, adoption, and Jewish ancestry.
This book was an interesting glimpse into the 1950s in the US. Nelson did a great job explaining why each of these issues led to shame and silence throughout the country.
Americans were after the “ideal” family, and all of these issues were perceived as detracting from that goal.
Nelson looks at individual memoirs to pull stories for each chapter of her book. It is interesting to note that most of the memoirs were written by people who grew up with these secrets in their families—and decided as adults to expose the secrets.
I felt that this book gives the reader good information. But it felt very sterile and unemotional to me. Perhaps that was the author’s intent. It also felt like a fairly dry summary of other people’s work.
I suppose my impressions of this book are tainted by my expectations. I began this book looking for a deep dive into some of these issues, seeing the emotions involved, and feeling some sort of redemption for the people who lived through these things and reclaimed their power later in life by exposing these secrets. Instead, I left with more general overview of these six issues and why they were taboos in the 1950s. I was left wanting more depth.
Keeping Family Secrets was released yesterday and is available now.
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Review - The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore
I received a free NetGalley of this book, but my opinions are all my own.
The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear is historical non-fiction, telling the story of Elizabeth Packard and her fight for women’s rights in the 19th century. The author uses Packard’s own writings, as well as the writings of others, to tell this in-depth story of the problems facing married women in the Civil War era.
Elizabeth Packard was sent to an insane asylum by her husband Theophilus. He forcibly removed her from her home, her six children, and her life, labelling her as “insane” and locking her up to protect himself from criticism for her opinions. Elizabeth was a force to be reckoned with, and not only did she survive the insane asylum, but she went on to change laws throughout the country so that the same thing would not continue happening to other married women.
The book is extremely detailed. I enjoyed reading it and learned much that I didn’t know about the Civil War era and women’s rights. The author really brings the reader into Elizabeth’s experience. We experience the frustrating feeling of being trapped right along with her. We experience the confusion as it is difficult to know who is trustworthy. We experience the heartbreak of her life as a mother.
Overall, I recommend this book. It is well-researched, well-written, and still relevant to the struggles of our day. At times it does move slowly and I feel that the story could have been told just as effectively in fewer pages. But ultimately, the author has done an incredible job with a difficult and complicated subject.