Thursday Mar 07, 2024
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
POWERHOUSE Arena
28 Adams Street (Corner of Adams & Water Street across from the Archway)
Brooklyn , NY
11201
Get Tickets Here!
About the Book.
Discover the complete social history of the housewife archetype, from colonial America to the 20th century, and re-examine common myths about the “modern woman.”
The notion of “housewife” evokes strong reactions. For some, it’s nostalgia for a bygone era, simpler and better times when men were breadwinners and women remained home with the kids. For others, it’s a sexist, oppressive stereotype of women’s work. Either way, housewife is a long outdated concept–or is it?
Lisa Selin Davis, known for her smart, viral, feminist, cultural takes, argues that the “breadwinner vs. homemaker” divide is a myth. She charts examples from prehistoric female hunters to working class housewives in the 1930s, from First Ladies to 21st century stay-at-home moms, on a search for answers to the problems of what is referred to as women’s work and motherhood. Davis discovers that women have been sold a lie about what families should be. Housewife unveils a truth: interdependence, rather than independence, is the American way.
The book is a clarion call for all women–married or single, mothers or childless–and for men, too, to push for liberation. In Housewife, Davis builds a case for systemic, cultural, and personal change, to encourage women to have the power to choose the best path for themselves.
Kelly McMasters is an essayist, professor, mother, and former bookshop owner. She is the author of the Zibby Book Club pick The Leaving Season: A Memoir-in-Essays (WW Norton) and co-editor of the ABA national bestseller Wanting: Women Writing About Desire (Catapult). Her essays, reviews, and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Paris Review Daily, The American Scholar, River Teeth: A Journal of Narrative Nonfiction, Romper, and Oprah Daily, among others. She is an Associate Professor of English at Hofstra University.