Revolutionary Mothers

Women in the Struggle for America's Independence

By: Carol Berkin

Narrated by: Donna Postel

Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

The American Revolution was a home-front war that brought scarcity, bloodshed, and danger into the life of every American, and Carol Berkin shows us that women played a vital role throughout the struggle.

Berkin takes us into the ordinary moments of extraordinary lives. We see women boycotting British goods in the years before independence, writing propaganda that radicalized their neighbors, raising funds for the army, and helping finance the fledgling government. We see how they managed farms, plantations, and businesses while their men went into battle, and how they served as nurses and cooks in the army camps, risked their lives seeking personal freedom from slavery, and served as spies, saboteurs, and warriors.

She introduces us to 16-year-old Sybil Ludington, who sped through the night to rouse the militiamen needed to defend Danbury, Connecticut; to Phillis Wheatley, literary prodigy and Boston slave who voiced the hopes of African Americans in poems; to Margaret Corbin, crippled for life when she took her husband's place beside a cannon at Fort Monmouth; to the women who gathered firewood, cooked, cleaned for the troops, nursed the wounded, and risked their lives carrying intelligence and participating in reconnaissance missions. Here, too, are Abigail Adams, Deborah Franklin, Lucy Knox, and Martha Washington, who lived with the daily knowledge that their husbands would be hanged as traitors if the revolution did not succeed.

©2005 Carol Berkin (P)2018 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Berkin vividly recounts Colonial women's struggles for independence - for their nation and, sometimes, for themselves.... [Her] lively book reclaims a vital part of our political legacy." (Los Angeles Times Book Review)

Outstanding knowledge of female history

This was a beautiful book about females showing their independence in different scenarios around the 1700s. With this book and a female reader reading out really emursed you into the book. I recommend any female or male to read this book. I wasnt a fan of history until I read this, believe me.

Required reading for American patriots.

That the accounts detailed in this book aren't better known is a national tragedy. While reading this book I felt both awe at the events described as well as bitterness because I hadn't heard them before. I almost certainly will listen to this book again.

“Ye” is pronounced “the”

Well narrated, although the consistent mispronunciation of “ye” grated. It’s a common error, but a professional narrator should know better

loved the diversity of women covered

loved the fact that this book covered Patriots and Torres. It covered the native women's views and lives. Also the perspective black individuals, of both free and slave standpoints were included. I found this to be an interesting book and easy to stick with.

Must read

Wow! So many interesting stories and facts that I had never heard or was reminded of. So empowering, beautiful, and hard. I love that she shared not just a white narrative but also native and African-American.

Offering a different angle of history

Reading this book you were introduced to a different angle of history that has been much ignored. There are very interesting characters and stories which broadens the perspective of our nations development. My criticism details more on the author focus primarily on identifying people by color and that of culture. It appears indirectly by her own examples that some characters achieve higher in their Communal hierarchy more so on their culture than that of their race. Otherwise I recommend the book if you were interested in the American revolution

Are you sure a man didn’t write this?

I expected this to be a bit dry, given the author’s academic background, and it’s historical subject. And it was. I did NOT expect 80% of the book to be a fawning, genteel description of nice little white women who followed their husbands’ directions and sometimes had to bravely suffer the looting of their wardrobes & pantries in polite silence.

Violence & rape are almost entirely glossed over, giving the impression that white women were somehow entirely spared the threat of such things, even while their homes were taken over by enemy soldiers, or while they were in actual army camps.

Indigenous women & black women get all of one chapter each, and even then, the indigenous chapter almost exclusively involves *Christian* indigenous women. The chapter on black women reads like a broad excerpt from a 7th grade history text, with little attention given specifically to women, and almost no detailed accounts of individual women, beyond when they were sold and by whom. I understand that most of the surviving, authenticated documentation of such situations is from the slave-owners’ perspective, but other writers have miraculously been able to find other sources, so why not this one?
Quotes from personal letters are used sparsely, and those few only further the stereotype that all women of this era were either helpless, or two-dimensional, devoted little helpmates who rarely had a thought of their own beyond epitomizing their own stereotype.
All in all, I expected at least a slightly feminist insight into this era, but instead got exactly what every whitewashed patriarchal textbook has churned out since I can remember.

Enjoyable read

I loved reading the book, it was entertaining and interesting to listen to. I wish the author talked more about where these stories came from. I liked hearing the great stories, but where did they come from? What primary sources were used? I would have liked to hear more about how she knew these events happened.