Cover of Life So Far: A Memoir

Life So Far: A Memoir

In Life So Far, Friedan takes us on an intimate journey throughout her own life, from her lonely childhood to the founding of Now, and her brilliant, contentious, and brave leadership of the movement.Friedan chronicles the secret underground of women in Washington in the early sixties who drafted her to spearhead an "NAACP" for women, and the daring of many who spoke out against discrimination for the first time. She recounts the political infighting and dirty tricks within the movement, and the forces that tried to destroy it, and how hard she fought to keep the movement practical and free of extremism, including "man hating". Friedan is frank about her twenty-two-year marriage to an advertising entrepreneur, which deteriorated into physical abuse.

Read more

Forthright, full of stories and larger-than-life characters, it is the scope of Friedan's vision and achievements that make her memoir so important and compelling. In Life So Far, an account only she could have written, Friedan spares neither herself nor anyone else.

Audience
adult
Length
long · 400 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Life So Far: A Memoir? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Life So Far: A Memoir. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Ahead of Time: My Early Years as a Foreign Correspondent Shares memoir, nonfiction, feminism
  2. LET IT GO : The Entrepreneur Turned Ardent Philanthropist Shares memoir, nonfiction, feminism
  3. Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundries of Gender Shares feminism, nonfiction, memoir
  4. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body Shares memoir, nonfiction, feminism

“People who read Life So Far: A Memoir tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Head Above Water
  2. In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton
  3. A Life In Words
  4. Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology

“If you want more of the same (biography about feminism), start with these.”

  1. The Not So Subtle Art of Being a Fat Girl: Loving the Skin You're In
  2. O Rugged Land of Gold
  3. Mom & Me & Mom
  4. Vital Voices: The Power of Women Leading Change Around the World

“If it was the memoir that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Famous for 15 Minutes: My Years with Andy Warhol
  2. Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution
  3. I Await the Devil's Coming
  4. May Cause Love: An Unexpected Journey of Enlightenment After Abortion

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties
  2. The Movement and the Sixties
  3. Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival
  4. Bearskin Diary