In the Country of Women: A Memoir

by Susan Straight

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A singular and deeply personal memoir told through the tapestry of three generations of women in one sprawling, multiracial, multiethnic, extended family. Mothers, grandmothers, aunts and nieces tackle head-on the searing realities of gender, race and class oppressions, but emerge in their stories as heroines, each of an often-perilous odyssey. It is a book animated by its gorgeous prose and an encompassing and generous love.

One of NPR's Best Books of the Year

“Straight’s memoir is a lyric social history of her multiracial clan in Riverside that explores the bonds of love and survival that bind them, with a particular emphasis on the women’s stories . . . The aftereffect of all these disparate stories juxtaposed in a single epic is remarkable. Its resonance lingers for days after reading.” —San Francisco Chronicle

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. Straight’s mother–in–law, Alberta Sims, is the descendant at the heart of this memoir. 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, now grown and working in museums and the entertainment industry, 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.”

“Certain books give off the sense that you won’t want them to end, so splendid the writing, so lyrical the stories. Such is the case with Southern California novelist Susan Straight’s new memoir, In the Country of Women . . . Her vibrant pages are filled with people of churned–together blood culled from scattered immigrants and native peoples, indomitable women and their babies. Yet they never succumb . . . Straight gives us permission to remember what went before with passion and attachment.” ––Los Angeles Times

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948226226
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	08/06/2019
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	965,543
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)
Lexile:	1030L (what's this?)

About the Author

SUSAN STRAIGHT has published eight novels, including Highwire Moon, Between Heaven and Here, and A Million Nightingales. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the National Magazine Award. She is the recipient of the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement from the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Edgar Award for Best Short Story, the O. Henry Prize, the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Granta, McSweeney’s, Black Clock, Harper’s, and other journals. Her work has been translated into Spanish, German, French, Arabic, Turkish, Japanese, Romanian, Swedish, and Russian. She is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. She was born in Riverside, where she lives with her family.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Homerica 3

Part I

1 Little House in the Thistles Glen Avon, California, 1963 19

2 The First Bullet Fine, Near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1876 35

3 The Dance Ruby Triboulet, Colorado Prairie, 1921 43

4 The Country Squire Riverside, California, 1973 54

5 Nurse-in-Charge Rosa Leu, Aeschlen, Switzerland, 1944 71

6 Hey Now Riverside, California, March 1974 80

7 Olympia-One Can Could Get You Pregnant, Riverside, California, June 1974 83

8 Daisy Belle Sunflower County, Mississippi, 1915 90

9 Driveway #1-The First Love Letter Riverside, California, May 1976 101

Part II

10 Castas 111

11 Mulato Riverside and Los Angeles, California, 1979 114

12 The Second Bullet Jennie Stevenson, Outside Tulsa, Oklahoma, Early 1900s 127

13 Fruitful 131

14 The Toast, Riverside, California, 1983 137

15 Fruitful #2 Riverside, California, 1989 152

Part III

16 Run the World Riverside, California, 1989 163

17 Wild Things Riverside, California, 1995 174

18 Pig Rubidoux and Riverside, California, 1997 (South Carolina, Oklahoma, Florida, Georgia) 177

19 The Santa Ana River 185

20 A Secondhand Lonely Riverside, California, 1998 187

21 Dew Point-A Pack of Four Riverside, California, Endless 190

22 Love Strands Riverside, California, 2000 203

23 Crosses and Missions California, 1998, 2000, 2004 211

24 Coach-Driveway #2 Riverside, California, 2004 217

25 The Batmobile Riverside, California, 2005 224

26 The Yard Couch Riverside, California, 2008 229

27 Grizzly Riverside, California (Tulsa, Oklahoma; Fraser, Colorado) 236

28 Nine 240

29 Al Green-Driveway #1, The Second Love Letter Riverside, California 248

30 Travels with My Ex in the Time of Revenue Orange County, California, 2009 253

Part IV

31 Switzerland, Loveland, Cuddyland Always, January 12, 1950, Always 269

32 Bring Me Your Smartest Girl Riverside, California, 2008; Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1925 283

33 Kin-White House #1 Los Angeles, California, 2009 (Tulsa, Oklahoma; Riverside, California) 290

34 A Place of Style and Refuge-White House #2 Riverside, California, December 2011 300

35 Letter to My Nephew-Our Dungeon Shook (After James Baldwin) Riverside, California, 2012 311

36 American Human Not Interested 322

37 Braid/Züpfe Los Angeles, California, 2017 325

38 Ancestry Riverside and Santa Barbara, California; Ibadan, Nigeria, 2018 333

39 Saphina Tennessee, 1870 347

40 The Work of Women-Evaporation and Memory, White House #3 Riverside, California, 2018 351

Acknowledgments 361

Editorial Reviews

05/06/2019

Novelist Straight (Between Heaven and Here) focuses on the lives of the women in her family in this moving memoir. The narrative is framed as a letter to Straight’s three daughters—Gaila, Delphine, and Rosette—whom Straight shares with her ex-husband Dwayne Sims, and honors the daughters’ rich ancestral past through stories of female relatives struggling to overcome violence, oppression, and hardship. Straight celebrates Jennie Stevenson, an aunt on the Sims side who, in the early 1900s, shot a man who cornered her, and Straight’s mother, a Swiss immigrant who left home after her stepmother tried to marry her off at 15 to a pig farmer. The author excels in chapters about raising her kids, and about finding her place in the Sims clan (Straight is white, Sims is African-American). She feels indebted to her mother-in-law, Alberta Sims, who showed her how to keep family and friends close (“she took my hand and led me to the kitchen.... Alberta cooked for the whole community”). In the touching final chapter, Straight reflects on the enduring power of memory: “All we women have to give you is memory.... What we felt we might keep to ourselves, unless someone wrote it down.” Straight passionately illuminates the hard journeys of women. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction
One of NPR's Best Books of the Year
An Amazon Best History Book of the Month

"In the end, Straight’s book is about far more than a country of women. It’s an ode to the entire multiracial, transnational tribe she claims as her own . . . In fact, her words are for all those who now call her mother, aunt, cousin and sister, in the neighborhood where she has lived her entire life. And for all those who survived, so these women could live." —Kristal Brent Zook, The New York Times Book Review

"While Straight reflects on far more than her own upbringing and experiences growing up, she brings her trademark lyricism and a significant dose of humility to those segments of the book . . . Not all the women Straight introduces us to are mothers, but it seems fitting that her book's final chapter also is addressed to her daughters . . . Straight's gift to them—the story of where they come from and the amazing women who have shaped their lives—nicely doubles as a gift for us." —Ericka Taylor, NPR

"Straight’s skillful ability to take us from the intimacy of family history to the wider considerations of America’s legacy is a wonder. This is not only a story of women, but of immigration, police brutality and the history of slavery . . . Straight captures an American story in all its ugly complexity." —Crystal Hana Kim, The Washington Post

"Lauded fiction writer Straight turns to memoir in this innovative and emotional exploration of the women in her and her husband’s lives, addressed to her daughters so they can know the stories of who came before them." —Entertainment Weekly

"Certain books give off the sense that you won’t want them to end, so splendid the writing, so lyrical the stories. Such is the case with Southern California novelist Susan Straight’s new memoir, In the Country of Women . . . Her vibrant pages are filled with people of churned–together blood culled from scattered immigrants and native peoples, indomitable women and their babies. Yet they never succumb . . . Straight gives us permission to remember what went before with passion and attachment." —Janet Kinosian, Los Angeles Times

"Susan Straight wrote this family history for her three daughters—and we’re lucky that she shared it with the rest of us. Theirs is a saga full of independent, brave, tough women . . . This is the story of America, through the lens of one family." —Elena Nicolau, Refinery29

"A moving family saga celebrates generations of bold, brave, and determined women. Award–winning novelist Straight makes her nonfiction debut with an eloquent, absorbing memoir. Addressed to her three adult daughters, the narrative weaves together stories that transcend time, place, race, and ethnicity to vibrantly portray her children's rich ancestry . . . A radiant memoir imbued with palpable love." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"With stirring details and delving perceptions, Straight chronicles the repercussions, generation after generation, of enslavement, Jim Crow, and immigration, as well as rape, murder, grueling work, and single motherhood, while tracing the journeys of the women in her clan to Canada, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona, and, finally, gritty, multicultural Riverside, California, Straight’s hometown. As Straight braids her three daughters into this deeply affecting saga, she maps her path to becoming a writer, encouraged by her mentor, James Baldwin, and profoundly inspired by her mother–in–law. Ultimately, this is a ravishing and revelatory celebration of womanhood, resilience, family, community, and America’s defining diversity." —Booklist (starred review)

“What a beautiful book! In the Country of Women must be the most populated, celebratory, filled–with–life memoir of our time. With her characteristic mix of compassion, warmth, humor, and acerbic insight, Susan Straight writes of her ‘massive black and mixed–race family’ and her ‘quirky, deeply embedded white family’—a memoir that is, though addressed to her three daughters, a valentine to virtually everyone whom the renowned author has known in the course of her vividly described life.” —Joyce Carol Oates

From the Publisher

★ 2019-04-28
A moving family saga celebrates generations of bold, brave, and determined women.

Award-winning novelist Straight (Between Heaven and Here, 2012, etc.) makes her nonfiction debut with an eloquent, absorbing memoir. Addressed to her three adult daughters, the narrative weaves together stories that transcend time, place, race, and ethnicity to vibrantly portray her children's rich ancestry. Straight is white: Her mother grew up in the Swiss Alps; her father, in Colorado. The couple settled in Riverside, California, a hardscrabble community of a wide variety of mixed ethnicities, all "dreamers of the golden dream." When she was 14, she met Dwayne Sims, an African American high school classmate; years later, they married and eventually settled near their families. Straight taught English to refugees and at a city college; Dwayne worked at a juvenile correctional facility. Frugality was a way of life. When her youngest daughter was asked how the family fared, she replied, "Wait—what's below humble?" They had been poor, Straight admits, finding furniture on the street and living without air conditioning in temperatures over 100 degrees, but "the safety and tether and history" of their families was ample compensation. "The women who came before you, my daughters, were legends," writes the author, and their journeys—from Africa, Europe, and across the American continent—entailed convoluted "maps and threads" that culminated in her own girls, "the apex of the dream." Her daughters inherited not only their ancestors' "defined cheekbones and dimples and high-set hips," but, more crucially, their beauty, intelligence, and defiant independence. Among those many women, Dwayne's mother, Alberta, shines: "bemused and regal and slightly mischievous," a warmhearted woman who unreservedly welcomed her white daughter-in-law. Listening to family stories and mining ancestry.com, Straight recounts the peril and hope, forced migration and fierce escapes, "thousands of miles of hardship," that women endured. "All of American history," she tells her daughters, "is in your bones."

A radiant memoir imbued with palpable love.

Kirkus Reviews