JELL-O Girls

A Family History

De: Allie Rowbottom

Narrado por: Allie Rowbottom

A "gorgeous" (New York Times) memoir that braids the evolution of one of America's most iconic branding campaigns with the stirring tales of the women who lived behind its facade - told by the inheritor of their stories.

In 1899, Allie Rowbottom's great-great-great-uncle bought the patent to Jell-O from its inventor for $450. The sale would turn out to be one of the most profitable business deals in American history, and the generations that followed enjoyed immense privilege - but they were also haunted by suicides, cancer, alcoholism, and mysterious ailments.

More than 100 years after that deal was struck, Allie's mother Mary was diagnosed with the same incurable cancer, a disease that had also claimed her own mother's life. Determined to combat what she had come to consider the "Jell-O curse" and her looming mortality, Mary began obsessively researching her family's past, determined to understand the origins of her illness and the impact on her life of Jell-O and the traditional American values the company championed. Before she died in 2015, Mary began to send Allie boxes of her research and notes, in the hope that her daughter might write what she could not. Jell-O Girls is the liberation of that story.

A gripping examination of the dark side of an iconic American product and a moving portrait of the women who lived in the shadow of its fractured fortune, Jell-O Girls is a family history, a feminist history, and a story of motherhood, love and loss. In crystalline prose Rowbottom considers the roots of trauma not only in her own family, but in the American psyche as well, ultimately weaving a story that is deeply personal, as well as deeply connected to the collective female experience.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Rowbottom weaves together her family history and the story of the classic American dessert to produce a book that alternately surprises and mesmerizes. Despite its title, this isn't a bland tale that goes down easy; Jell-O Girls is dark and astringent, a cutting rebuke to its delicate, candy-colored namesake.... Rowbottom has the literary skills and the analytical cunning to pull it off. Like a novelist, she can imagine herself into the emotional lives of others, while connecting her story and theirs to a larger narrative of cultural upheaval.... The writing is lush yet alert to specific.... But then Rowbottom's book is too rich and too singular to reduce to a tidy argument.... Gorgeous."
—Jennifer Szalai, New York Times

"We all come from somewhere, yet I never imagined that someone could come from Jell-O. From these beginnings, Allie Rowbottom has molded this generous book of intuition, connection, and grace. This is a work of wild insights and deep music."
—Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

"The author's family's Jell-O empire brought wealth and privilege but also seemed to curse the lives of her grandmother, her mother and herself. With this fascinating cultural history of an iconic dessert and its creators, Rowbottom has found the courage to break the mold."—People

"A fascinating feminist exploration... a strange, sensitive account of trauma, motherhood, and America."—Real Simple

"Watch it glimmer, see it shimmer, cool and fruity, Jell-O.... If you're an American of a certain age, that jingle will come to mind unbidden as you open Allie Rowbottom's devastating memoir.... Her book doubles as a social history of the influential brand and its patriarchal messaging.... The mother-daughter portrait that emerges here melts the heart."—O, the Oprah Magazine

"Allie Rowbottom's memoir is an unflinching exploration of the inheritance and curse behind an American icon. Graceful and genuine, Jell-O Girls is what happens when a damn good story meets an even better writer."—Mat Johnson, author of Pym and Loving Day

"To most Americans, Jell-O is a diner staple; the savior of the sickroom; the sweet "glue" for the fruit mold grandma serves at Thanksgiving. But Jell-O was a darker thing for Allie Rowbottom's family. Although her great-great-great uncle's purchase of the Jell-O patent secured the family fortune, it also molded its female members in ways that insidiously defined and confined. In this first-ever insider account Rowbottom mixes up equal parts history, sociology, feminist tract and personal mother-daughter story to create a literary treatise as clear and bright as Jell-O itself."—Carolyn Wyman, author of Jell-O: A Biography

A powerful book about the struggle of women in the patriarchy

Mother and daughter both absorbed the weight of the patriarchal ideal, suffered and fought back. Beautifully written and very moving

Great book

The author is not the best reader/ performer, but the story stands strong in its own. A beautiful book.

Fascinating look at a mother-daughter relationship

Allie Rowbottom is of an age to be my daughter and I of her mother. This book is a beautifully written account of what it means to be a member of Generation Y raised by a Baby Boomer. This is the story of three generations of women who struggle with finding their identity in a culture that undervalues women's intellect and overvalues their appearances and what they can do for the men in their orbits. I see my friends in this story, their relationships with both their mothers and their daughters, and their own struggles with identity in a world where feminism was taking flight.

Along the way we get a glimpse into the world of eating disorders, mass psychogenic illness, conversion disorder, and the culture of the Jell-O legacy and how it is intertwined with all of the above.

Joyless lives

Jell-O topped with Patriarchy - crippler of young adults. Women doomed to misery from birth.

Not what I expected.

This book got rave revues on Amazon. It was a let down. The history of Jello was too frequent and detracted from the story.