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 Either way, housewife is a long outdated concept–or is it?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.
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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.