Wini breines biography of abraham
Young, White, and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties
September 2, 2021
Young, White and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties by Wini Breines provides many insights into the world I did not know. I grew up in the 1950s, but in a different world. Thus, this book provides some understanding of the privileged lives that White youth led, even though they were trapped and confined in “Leave It to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” worlds. Her book documents the sociology of the day and their focus in the post-World War II days in “progress” and a better life. Their focus was not on the Black community, my world, but the field was still consumed with blaming the victims and waiting for people on the margins to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
I think I was on the margins of her world: listening to music, aware of films with glamorous stars, and the messages about gender and the future. Yet, while many people write about how these images did not include Black girls like me, I was looking at it from a distance because that was not my world. Just as I could read the Dick and Jane primers without it challenging my desire to read, I knew this was not my world. She writes about young girls longing for a trapping of a world that I occupied, but it was not a fantasy to me.
My working-class family struggled to make ends meet, so there was not the illusion of comfort where you could sit in your room and dream of options. I shared the top of a bunk bed with my sister until I was nine, when we moved into a larger apartment with two bunk beds and I finally had my own bed. I did not have my own room until I moved into my own apartment, where I referred to my bedroom as “my room.” Yet, at the age of five, my sister and I took ballet lessons in Greenwich Village in NYC. My father took us on the bus, but my aunt picked us up, often we ate in outdoor cafes surrounded by gay men. I did not have a language about “gayness,” but they were part of my world.
My father, high school educated, was limited to service work, but he made the best of it. During elementary school, he worked as a bartender in a jazz club in Greenwich Village, so that music is part of my background with musicians coming in and out of our small apartment in the neighborhood that would become the East Village. Family members were part of that music scene, occupations that were open to them, but I still heard stories of how they faced discrimination. Visits to the village in high school, meant I heard these musicians. My parents were progressive, as were many of the White and Black people in their circle of friends. It is not just growing up in NYC, but the community and the village that raised me—even as we moved to different parts of the city.
My mother must have picked neighborhoods carefully, because I did not have the isolated experiences of the Black women Breines cites in her book. In fact, I was president of the student government in a predominantly White high school in the 1960s. There might have been advantages to remaining in Manhattan, while other boroughs meant more challenges—as I could see in the book about Nellie McKay. I also learned politics at the kitchen table that gave me a lens for thinking about what I faced in my schools. I also was part of the civil rights movement, active in NY High School Friend of SNCC. There were sites where I developed confidence. I could question the incoming messages from the mass culture and later would use those skills to questions the fields I studied.
Yet, Breines helps me understand the White middle-class female students in my high school, less so in college, because as a commuter student there were few students knew well. Most of my friends were first generation college students. We were directed to employment, since that was the culture. There was no finding a man who would support you, evidence of married Black women’s high levels of labor participation. I knew I would work, but what work was the question. In my research on Black college graduates in the late 1960s, many saw themselves as “career only” while in college; even when they would later marry and have children. Their mindset was different from their White classmates, who were expected to get the MRS degree. Reading this book, I could better understand the tensions of friends, tensions I did not share and perhaps they could not vocalize.
I always knew Talcott Parson’s daughter committed suicide, but none of the details. Anne Parson was clearly a victim of her era and she did not have the resources to challenge the establishment. In graduate school I had a psychiatrist, at a reduced rate, but he was clearly in training. He could not help me cope with the systemic racism I faced teaching part-time. He found my own behavior questionable, but a quiet dinner with friends who supported me during these rough times was an asset. In terms of this therapist, if Freud did not cover it, then it was not on the agenda. I had enough support over my life to dismiss his visions that I could see came from his own limited experience as a White male. Sorry Anne did not have the resources, but again her story reveals a racial line.
Yes, there is much to rethink. The fact that many Black women rose to leadership positions in the Civil Rights movement is worthy of comment here. They were also leaders in the labor movement. I was often perplexed about why White feminists moved to issues of personal sexual desire, but this book helps me understand it. My own mission was more about social and racial justice along many dimensions. I guess this is what I learned in my Black, working-class home. Breines helps fill in pieces of the puzzle.
I think I was on the margins of her world: listening to music, aware of films with glamorous stars, and the messages about gender and the future. Yet, while many people write about how these images did not include Black girls like me, I was looking at it from a distance because that was not my world. Just as I could read the Dick and Jane primers without it challenging my desire to read, I knew this was not my world. She writes about young girls longing for a trapping of a world that I occupied, but it was not a fantasy to me.
My working-class family struggled to make ends meet, so there was not the illusion of comfort where you could sit in your room and dream of options. I shared the top of a bunk bed with my sister until I was nine, when we moved into a larger apartment with two bunk beds and I finally had my own bed. I did not have my own room until I moved into my own apartment, where I referred to my bedroom as “my room.” Yet, at the age of five, my sister and I took ballet lessons in Greenwich Village in NYC. My father took us on the bus, but my aunt picked us up, often we ate in outdoor cafes surrounded by gay men. I did not have a language about “gayness,” but they were part of my world.
My father, high school educated, was limited to service work, but he made the best of it. During elementary school, he worked as a bartender in a jazz club in Greenwich Village, so that music is part of my background with musicians coming in and out of our small apartment in the neighborhood that would become the East Village. Family members were part of that music scene, occupations that were open to them, but I still heard stories of how they faced discrimination. Visits to the village in high school, meant I heard these musicians. My parents were progressive, as were many of the White and Black people in their circle of friends. It is not just growing up in NYC, but the community and the village that raised me—even as we moved to different parts of the city.
My mother must have picked neighborhoods carefully, because I did not have the isolated experiences of the Black women Breines cites in her book. In fact, I was president of the student government in a predominantly White high school in the 1960s. There might have been advantages to remaining in Manhattan, while other boroughs meant more challenges—as I could see in the book about Nellie McKay. I also learned politics at the kitchen table that gave me a lens for thinking about what I faced in my schools. I also was part of the civil rights movement, active in NY High School Friend of SNCC. There were sites where I developed confidence. I could question the incoming messages from the mass culture and later would use those skills to questions the fields I studied.
Yet, Breines helps me understand the White middle-class female students in my high school, less so in college, because as a commuter student there were few students knew well. Most of my friends were first generation college students. We were directed to employment, since that was the culture. There was no finding a man who would support you, evidence of married Black women’s high levels of labor participation. I knew I would work, but what work was the question. In my research on Black college graduates in the late 1960s, many saw themselves as “career only” while in college; even when they would later marry and have children. Their mindset was different from their White classmates, who were expected to get the MRS degree. Reading this book, I could better understand the tensions of friends, tensions I did not share and perhaps they could not vocalize.
I always knew Talcott Parson’s daughter committed suicide, but none of the details. Anne Parson was clearly a victim of her era and she did not have the resources to challenge the establishment. In graduate school I had a psychiatrist, at a reduced rate, but he was clearly in training. He could not help me cope with the systemic racism I faced teaching part-time. He found my own behavior questionable, but a quiet dinner with friends who supported me during these rough times was an asset. In terms of this therapist, if Freud did not cover it, then it was not on the agenda. I had enough support over my life to dismiss his visions that I could see came from his own limited experience as a White male. Sorry Anne did not have the resources, but again her story reveals a racial line.
Yes, there is much to rethink. The fact that many Black women rose to leadership positions in the Civil Rights movement is worthy of comment here. They were also leaders in the labor movement. I was often perplexed about why White feminists moved to issues of personal sexual desire, but this book helps me understand it. My own mission was more about social and racial justice along many dimensions. I guess this is what I learned in my Black, working-class home. Breines helps fill in pieces of the puzzle.