Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen: A Novel - Softcover

Shulman, Alix Kates

3.5

1,568 ratings by Goodreads

9780374530792: Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen: A Novel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0374530793 ISBN 13: 9780374530792

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Alix Kates Shulman's Memoirs of an Ex–Prom Queen created a profound impact on the cultural landscape when it was originally published in 1972. A sardonic portrayal of one white, middle-class, Midwestern girl's coming-of-age, the novel takes a wry and prescient look at a range of experiences treated at the time as taboo but which were ultimately accepted as matters of major political significance: sexual harassment, job discrimination, the sexual double standard, rape, abortion restrictions, the double binds of marriage and motherhood, and the frantic quest for beauty.

The book went on to sell more than a million copies and is regarded today as a classic, one of the first and best pieces of fiction born of the women's liberation movement. With many of its concerns still with us today, this witty and devastating novel continues to resonate with readers, and Sasha Davis has proved herself a prom queen for the ages.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Alix Shulman is the author of four other novels, three memoirs including the award-winning Drinking the Rain, two books on the anarchist Emma Goldman, an essay collection, and three children's books.

From The Washington Post:

Reviewed by Evelyn Small

Called by its original publisher (Knopf) the "first feminist novel," Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen appeared 35 years ago and sold more than a million copies in just a few years. Now it's back, in an anniversary edition reprint. The narrator, Sasha Davis, an Ohio girl, high school prom queen, now divorced and in a second marriage "headed for the same miserable demise as the first," is still searching for herself. Touching on issues that continue to color the cultural landscape -- abortion, date rape, balancing work and motherhood -- Memoirs was, for some readers, what the Saturday Review (May 20, 1972) called a "break-through book," the "first important novel to emerge from the Women's Liberation movement."

The Post's reviewer, Barbara Howar (April 26, 1972), took the messages of the book personally: "With uncomfortable frequency, I find myself torn between the warring factions of the Women's Rights Movement and its natural enemy, the Great White Male. So grand is my passion for both that I resent having to take sides which it becomes my sticky business to do in commenting on this first novel. . . . Heroine Sasha recounts with heavy humor her blundering quest for autonomy in a male-oriented society . . . terrorized by bullying, domineering little boys who grew into big ones.

"Having been a Prom Queen a time or two, I can readily share Sasha's rage at being pushed into beauty-worship before she gets the message that a woman just might need something more in life than the identity of the man she marries. . . .

"Sasha refuses to see that her parents as well as the goodly number of men in her life are victimized by the same system that did her in, that we are all in the soup together. . . .

"After this cathartic memoir, my guess is that Alix Shulman will get her sense of humor and fair-play into some less paranoid perspective and write a constructive book better suited to her talent and to the vast army of troubled women who need her."

Shulman has written three other novels, several children's books, two books on Emma Goldman and two memoirs, A Good Enough Daughter and Drinking the Rain.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.