Benoite Groult. (2012). My Escape: An Autobiography. Other Press.

Benoite Groult. 2012. My Escape: An Autobiography. Other Press.

Benoite Groult, My Escape: An Autobiography. Other Press, 2012.

Benoite Groult. My Escape: An Autobiography. Other Press, 2012.

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My Escape

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1. • value: Biography
2. • value: autobiographies
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4. • value: Autobiography
5. • value: Memoirs
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10. • value: biographies
11. • value: History
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13. • value: memoir
14. • value: Sociology
15. • value: biographies and memoirs
16. • value: history books
17. • value: historical biographies
18. • value: women in history
19. • value: books for women
20. • value: inspirational books for women
21. • value: feminism books
22. • value: women's history month
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24. • value: feminist book
25. • value: biographies of famous people
26. • value: sociology books
27. • value: memoir books
28. • value: self love books for women
29. • value: autobiography books
30. • value: feminist gifts
31. • value: good books for women
32. • value: feminist thought
33. • value: about women

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Groult, Benoite
   • bioText: Benoîte Groult was born in Paris in 1920. She is a renowned and best-selling French novelist, essayist, and a founder of modern feminism. She has been a member of the jury of the Prix Femina since 1982, and in 2010 was promoted to the rank of Commandeur de la Légion d’honneur. Her autobiography My Escape is an international best seller, selling hundreds of thousands of copies in Holland and more than a million copies in Germany.
      
     Nichole Gleisner received her PhD in French literature from Duke University in 2011.
     She has published on the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and this is her first translation for Other Press. She currently lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut.
   • name: Benoite Groult

publishDate

2012-10-23T00:00:00-04:00

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title

My Escape

fullDescription

This witty autobiography captures the rich and varied life of a renowned French author and pioneering feminist, through the obstacles and movements in twentieth-century France.
 
Born in 1920 in Paris, Benoite Groult obtained the right to vote only when she was twenty-five years old. She married four times, bore three children, underwent several illegal abortions, became a writer after she turned forty, and a feminist in her fifties. Groult chronicles her experiences and her intellectual developments through successive phases—as an obedient child, an awkward and bookish adolescent, and a submissive wife—until finally becoming a liberated novelist.
 
Here, she recounts the childhood trips she spent with her family, Paris during the occupation, her marriages, motherhood, and her continuous fight for women’s rights. At ninety-one years old, she concludes that she has been, and still is, a happy woman—lucky to have captured her freedoms, one by one, paying for them, delighting in them, and loving them. Sexy, chatty, and full of shrewd insight, My Escape covers her years of struggle and success—as a daughter, lover, writer, wife, mother, and reluctant socialite—and draws a portrait of the role of French women in the twentieth century.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Kate Millett, author of Sexual Politics
   • content:

     "Now finally the last first generation feminist book."

2. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus
   • content: "Frank, no-nonsense reflections by the French novelist about her gradual road to feminism through World War II, three husbands and the embrace of the writing life...A cleareyed memoir by a writer resolved to claim her 'place on the battlefield of feminism.'"
3. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly
   • content: "[Groult] endears herself to readers through profound insights and a generous sense of humor; her honest and occasionally bawdy style is a major plus....this book embodies what an autobiography should be: a careful selection of memories, anecdotes, and observations that gives the feeling of having conversed with a wonderful and memorable person."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Seattle Pi
   • content: "My Escape is written in a way that reveals the author's voice, the author's mind. It is written in a style that is intelligent and thoughtful, warm and humorous, both thought provoking and touching...My Escape is utterly accessible and reveals a woman who has lived a life that stretches beyond the world of Academia...a gem of a book, written by a woman who is an example to all of us...she is real, working tirelessly for the cause of Feminism whilst living and loving, doubting and struggling. She is a woman of passion and commitment and a woman I would love to meet."
5. • premium: False
   • source: BC Books
   • content: "Her feminism is the feminism of every woman...She does not approach feminism from a dry academic position, but from the vibrant stance of a woman who has lived life to the full and who has fought for equal rights whilst being a mother, a wife, a grandmother and a professional writer."
6. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     December 3, 2012
     Groult, a proud, sassy feminist, is well known in France for—among other ouvres—her then-racy novel Salt on Our Skin and her widely-read Ainsi soit-elle, which alerted many French readers for the first time to the practice of female genital mutilation. Whether one is familiar or not with Groult's work, this book is delightful for its frequently beautiful prose, and appealing for how it deals with controversial subjects (abortion, female subjugation, sexism in language). Intimate memories of the author's childhood—skiing with her father, wonder-gawking at her mother—and adulthood are fraught with struggle and questioning, as are her loves and love affairs. Misgivings about daughter-, mother-, grandmother-, and wife-hood decorate Groult's story, to which she adds interviews as well as analyses of women's treatment both in literature and in society at large. She endears herself to readers through profound insights and a generous sense of humor; her honest and occasionally bawdy style is a major plus. Though the book is not always seamless in its construction, it is clear that what Groult remembers and contemplates matters deeply to her. In that sense this book embodies what an autobiography should be: a careful selection of memories, anecdotes, and observations that gives the feeling of having conversed with a wonderful and memorable person.

7. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     November 1, 2012
     Frank, no-nonsense reflections by the French novelist about her gradual road to feminism through World War II, three husbands and the embrace of the writing life. Describing herself as docile and untalented as a child, Groult became a "timorous teenager" by 1939. She writes that it took the next 20 years for her to awaken the "deep sleep of [her] intelligence" and sexuality. In these warm, outspoken reflections on her coming-of-age and maturity, Groult blames the deep-seated misogyny of the time for her early feelings of insignificance: the patriarchal Catholic schools, the lack of strong female role models, the pressure on young women to find husbands, the lack of meaningful careers and derision generally held for women with education. Like her literary model, Simone de Beauvoir, Groult was bookish and conflicted continually by the tension to achieve as well as be attractive to men. Confined to occupied Paris with her family, she writes unreservedly about French anti-Semitism ("The Jews had their own fate which didn't concern me"), her brief first marriage to a dying consumptive poet and her sexual enlightenment thanks to a newly liberated Paris full of American soldiers. Her marriage to the dashing journalist Georges de Caunes opened doors as a radio journalist during a frightening time when she had to seek abortions every few months. A new marriage and the women's movement spurred her breakthrough best-seller Ainsi soit-elle in 1975, inspired by stories of female circumcision. A question-and-answer format with journalist and biographer Josyane Savigneau marks the later chapters. A cleareyed memoir by a writer resolved to claim her "place on the battlefield of feminism."

     COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

popularity

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shortDescription

This witty autobiography captures the rich and varied life of a renowned French author and pioneering feminist, through the obstacles and movements in twentieth-century France.
 
Born in 1920 in Paris, Benoite Groult obtained the right to vote only when she was twenty-five years old. She married four times, bore three children, underwent several illegal abortions, became a writer after she turned forty, and a feminist in her fifties. Groult chronicles her experiences and her intellectual developments through successive phases—as an obedient child, an awkward and bookish adolescent, and a submissive wife—until finally becoming a liberated novelist.
 
Here, she recounts the childhood trips she spent with her family, Paris during the occupation, her marriages, motherhood, and her continuous fight for women’s rights. At ninety-one years old, she concludes that she has been, and still is, a happy woman—lucky to have captured her...

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My Escape An Autobiography

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2. • code: BIO026000
   • description: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs
3. • code: SOC010000
   • description: Social Science / Feminism & Feminist Theory