W-Women Globally

Ruth Reichl is editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine and former New York Times restaurant critic. During her ‘Times’ years she was known for her inconventional approach to issues that the other critics tend to overlook. ‘She has written from an outsider’s perspective about the snobbery and pretension of some well-known New York restaurants, and she has delved into the sexism that often confronts women while eating out’.  (source: salon.com)

She is also a writer of the best-selling books based on her own memoirs: Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table, Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table, and Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise.

Recently she has published a book Not Becoming My Mother (and Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way) where she very honestly approaches her childhood years and her mother who had a bipolar disorder. Reichl’s story however is not only a deeply private memoir, she draw a portrait of the whole generation of mothers:

I feel like my mother’s story is the story of so many other women. These women had no models; they had no way to know how to live this emancipated life. And they kept getting tripped up. They were educated; my mother was enormously educated. And then nothing happened. They were just bored to death, and they weren’t allowed to work. And my mother very consciously says in her notes to herself, and in letters to other people, “I am going to make sure that life for my daughter is better than mine was.” I mean, the generosity of that sort of stuns me because so many unhappy people want everybody else to be unhappy too. And here was my mother, whose life was really blighted by her inability to work and by so many things – by her having been told she had to get married, by having been told that she wasn’t pretty. (source: wowowow.com)

Reichl literally opens a box of her mother’s memoires, diaries and realises the tragedy of her mother’s life. She discovers an extremely sensible, helping and intellectually seeking person, a long-time friend of Bertrand Russel, who whole her life tried to fulfill her parent’s dreams ending up unhappy and stuck in her role as a housekeeper. Mother’s message to Ruth is very clear: be independent, become the person you would like to be, do not follow my example.

Extremely touching and deeply provoking story of the historic and contemporary condition of women. A must-read!

See also:

the interview with Ruth Reich - with her restaurant critic hat on.

the interview  from Time Magazine

the broadcast from onpointradio

and the interview on wowowow.com.

The story tipped by @illusionists, theillusionists.org