My unsentimental education /
My unsentimental education : a memoir
Debra Monroe.
- 1 online resource (217 pages)
Prologue -- History and practical math -- Regional trades -- On the down-low -- Drinks are on the house -- Intermission -- In the event of an apocalypse -- Serfs and landlords -- Depredating deer -- A dress rehearsal -- Epilogue.
"A misfit in Spooner, Wisconsin with its farms, bars, and strip joints, Debra Monroe leaves to earn a degree, then another, another, and builds a career--if only because her plans to be a Midwestern housewife continually get scuttled. Her professional life improves because she's good at 'hard-core feigning.' Fearless but naive, she vaults over class barriers, but never quite leaves her past behind. When it comes to men, she's still blue-collar. Monroe pays careful attention to what love and sex mean to a 'liberated' woman: to the pressure to be assertive yet not too assertive; to different prices women pay for being 'sultry-powerful' or 'brainy-powerful.' Both the story of her steady rise into the professional class and a parallel history of unsuitable exes, this memoir reminds us how accidental even a good life can be. If Joan Didion advises us 'to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be,' Monroe takes this advice a step further and nods at the people she might have become but didn't. Funny, poignant, wise, My Unsentimental Education explores the confusion that ensues when a working class girl ends up far from where she began"--Provided by publisher.
9780820348735 (e-book)
Monroe, Debra. Monroe, Debra--Relations with men.
Authors, American--20th century--Biography. Women authors, American--20th century--Biography. Working class women--United States--Biography. Single mothers--United States--Biography. Man-woman relationships--United States. Sex role--United States. Working class families--Wisconsin--Spooner.