Review: Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own

Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a middle-aged, single woman moving to New York (with cats to boot!), I may have found more to relate with in Kate Bolick's Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own than most people.  The book is part Kate's memoir, part biography of women she calls her "awakeners."  These are women who at one point or all points of theirs lives could have been described by "spinster."  I enjoyed that Kate takes this term and reclaims it from its negative connotations.

I already knew some of her awakeners, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edith Wharton, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.  Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper and Herland have stuck with me since college.  It was great to meet more women who went against the grain in some way to forge a future in which women like me could do their own thing and not be defined/confined by their marital status.  Not to say things are perfect yet but certainly better.  I would definitely recommend this book to any single woman and also to anyone who really just wants to learn about some great writers.

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