In the Country of Women

A Memoir

De: Susan Straight

Narrado por: Donna Postel

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. 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, 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."

©2019 Susan Straight (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

BEAUTIFUL STORY OF FAMILY, LOVE, LOSS AND HOLDING MEMORIES ❣️

Great reader…. THANK YOU for making this book come so ALIVE and TOUCH MY HEART‼️

A love letter to California’s diversity

Strait reveals the richness of her life in working class neighborhoods in Southern California where people from all around the world share the struggle to find their footing and raise their families. The women are the center post of their families, lend support to one another and form the stable backbone of their communities. Love and pride infuses every page of this inspiring book.

Southern CA must read

Great writing. AND - if you grew up in Southern CA this is a must read. The specific rich landscape we don’t often get to experience in a publishing world dominated by easterners.
❤️

Beautiful love letter to her children but ultimately a too long and boring book

This autobiographical book is a beautiful love story to the authors three children but it was too long and rambling and boring to hold my interest even though many of her cultural references were familiar to me as I grew up in Los Angeles during the period of time that she wrote about. I eventually stopped listening with 2 hours left. Couldn’t take it any more.

Too Long

I fast forwarded through a lot of this. And the narrator was hard to listen to - quite nasally. The only reason I kept with it was because it was highly recommended by a friend.