Twenty-five years after its initial publication, this landmark book continues to fascinate readers with a frank, sardonic look at one woman's intellectual and sexual awakening. Reprint.

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Paperbacks
Publication date

Sept. 18 1997
Dimensions

13.34 x 1.91 x 19.69 cm
ISBN-10

0140265716
ISBN-13

978-0140265712
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Paperbacks; Reprint edition (Sept. 18 1997)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0140265716
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140265712
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 204 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.34 x 1.91 x 19.69 cm

Customer Reviews:
3.6 143 ratings

About the author

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Alix Kates Shulman

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Alix Kates Shulman is the award-winning author of 15 books of fiction, memoir, biography, essays, and books for children. The NY Times hailed her "the voice that has for three decades provided a lyrical narrative of the changing position of women in American society." Her books range from her million-copy debut novel Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, now a feminist classic, to the Library of America anthology Women's Liberation!: Feminist Writings that Inspired a Revolution and Still Can (co-edited with Honor Moore).

A lifelong political activist, Alix attended the 1963 March for Equality in Washington, DC, where Martin Luther King, Jr., declared his dream, and joined New York City's first women's liberation group in 1967. She received a Clara Lemlich Award for a lifetime of social activism in 2018.

Her books have been published in twelve languages, and her writing has appeared in, among other publications, The Atlantic, The NY Times, The Nation, The Guardian, Dissent, Salon, n+1, Tikkun. Her books for adults are all available as ebooks, and most also in paper.

For reviews of her books and biographical details, see her website: www.AlixKShulman.com.

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posoff@prodigy.net

Did Sasha represent young women of the1940's/50's?

Reviewed in Canada on April 23, 1998

I enjoyed the book but found it hard to believe that toward the end of the 1940's that this young
woman was having sex and that by her mid twenties she had traveled to Europe and had close to 30 lovers. I always thought the sexual revolution started in the late 60's and that most young woman of her time were virgins or MAYBE had one or so sexual experiences but this seemed unbelieveable. I enjoyed the book until she and Will had Andy. I understand her absolute love for her daughter, but the book seemed to go downhill from there. It was almost like a rush to an ending.

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Kathleen Jones

Still relevant after 47 years

Reviewed in Canada on August 19, 2019

Sasha Davis, a young woman growing up in a middle-class Cleveland family in the 1940’s and 1950’s, comes to terms with her fate: marriage and children. She understands that in order to achieve those goals, she must become beautiful. Sasha does grow into a beauty, earning the title of prom queen at her high school; however, she never believes she is truly attractive, and she becomes obsessed with the pursuit of beauty. Unaware of her own keen intelligence and desperate to “prove” herself, she has sex with most of the men—a largely selfish, narcissistic bunch—who pursue her. This perfectly-written novel is brutally honest about the limited choices women had in the mid-20th century. The characters are true-to-life and realistically flawed. A great novel that’s still relevant more than 45 years after its publication in 1972.

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Alison

An amazing coming of age story

Reviewed in Canada on May 4, 2001

I recently finished "Memoirs" and I can not stop thinking about it. I had never read any thing like it and it has greatly impacted my life and the way I perceive things. I received "Memoirs" as a Christmas prestent in 1999, when I was fourteen. It was only this past Easter vacation however that I got a chance to really read and listen to what Sasha, the protagonist, had to tell me. Sasha was born during the War and lived in a mid-western middle class town. She was surrounded by all the femal sterotypes of the day, but because of her intelligence was able to pursue some of her dreams. Sasha's fears and desires are all the things that we think but don't talk about. Almost everyone has felt the degrading affects of disrespect, including Sasha. While some of her descriptions of situations are accompanied by swears I feel that you have to look past it and put yourself in the situation. This book gives you a clear picture of an almost date rape, the confusions of growing up, and the day to day struggles that women go/went through. I highly reccommend this book to mature teenages as well as adults. This book has made me realize just how lucky I am to be living in a time where women are now able to talk, instead of keeping their secrets bottled up.
~a 16 Year old reader

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alisonjean

depressing, yet a wonderful book

Reviewed in Canada on July 12, 2002

I just finished reading Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen [in a span of 24 hours, including 12 hours sleep], and struggling not to sound cliche, this book really changed my view on the world. Even though it was published in 1969, Sasha's experiences in a men-dominated society, especially as a teenager, are not too far from the world we live in today. We are still expected to get married and have children, and if we balk at the idea, though not said aloud, many still view us as abnormal, or lacking affection and maternal instincts - frigid. As I said in the title, this book, for me, was depressing in a personal context, and opened my eyes to the fact that inevitably, we will be the ones stuck with the children, the ones going unsatisfied, and the ones taken and [taken advantage of] for the pleasure of a man. So I don't like men too much, oh well. And even if you don't share the same views as I, don't hesitate to pick up this book because it will have an effect on you that no other book that I know of can deliver.
~another 16 year old reviewer named Alison

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Dilma M. Silva (dilma@ime.usp.br)

Excellent writing; intriguing female character

Reviewed in Canada on June 3, 1998

I decided to read all of the books from this author after browsing her last book (Drinking from the Rain, I believe) and getting absolutely hooked on it. Her writing really appeals to me. It is not easy for me to understand Sasha, the main character in this book, probably because of the generation gap, but also because I couldn't accept her to be so strong and so weak at the same time. The ending is also very confusing, I didn't expect marriage and maternity to have such a strong effect on her (negative, from my view). I will be checking out here at amazon to see if other people can help me to make sense of the book ending. I intend to read other books from Ms. Alix K. Shulman pretty soon.

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Top reviews from other countries

Jaishri Srinivasan

Feminism as man-bashing and self-defeating whiny narcissism

Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2019

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I give the book 2 stars for its narrative style and erudition. But that is it. It was a very painful read for me because I started to completely despise the central character. Sasha Davis is a girl who is brought up in a conventional middle-class family in the 40s. She has a comfortable lifestyle and everything that her parents could afford to give her. Her father gave her a curiosity for learning and encouraged her towards a career and her mother gave her pragmatic advice on choosing a man.

With every advantage and comfort a middle-class life afford, how does Sasha become such a self-hating, shallow, narcissist? That is never quite made clear. She reads literature and philosophy and is an avid learner initially. She manages to get to Columbia for grad school. But none of this learning seems to impact her inner emotional life. I guess this is where IQ and EQ part ways. She may have been intelligent, but her poor emotional choices consistently result in her undermining her own empowerment and independence. Instead she (or the author) finds a way to blame it on the men in her life! First her father, then her teenage boyfriends, then her first husband Frank and finally her second husband William.

If this was to be a book on a female discovering herself or finding her way to empowerment or enlightenment or making wiser choices in life, you could look elsewhere. Her affair with a married man - Alport - puts front and center her very low self-worth. She meets Mrs. Alport who is the epitome of a woman who has a very high sense of self-worth and she is determined not to be in Mrs. Alport's shoes because of her dependence on the marriage??? Never mind that later she finds herself in the same predicament and handles it rather badly.

And then she goes on to get married. Sasha comes across as a woman who has absolutely no problem getting men, but has absolutely zero relationship skills and is puerile when it comes to keeping them. While the failure of her first marriage may have been excused due to incompatibility, her second marriage to William showed every chance of success. He was a man who was worthy of a great woman. Sasha was not that woman. Having a kid put it in jeopardy. Sasha was aware of the problems in the marriage were due to her own behavior. The sad truth is when a child comes in, many women go nuts and forget their own personhood and the personhood of their husband. They become uber-forcused on meeting the child's every need to the detriment of their husband and marriage. And if he complains, they can always throw the words Sacrifice and Baby. A man just can't win against that and many marriages land in serious trouble or fail because of that. A man is not just a sperm donor or Sugar Daddy!

Again, Sasha shows no awareness of how to fix problems in the marriage. She kept mum about it and her solution to the existing problem was to exacerbate it by having a second kid! I really felt for William and his predicament. Here was a guy who was fighting for his marriage and he is termed as a bully??? Sasha expected him to turn into another woman who is excited by every tiny little thing about the kids. She completely forgot that he had needs of his own that were not being met in the marriage and he did try to articulate it as a man and accused her of not trusting him with the kids and of succumbing to being tyrannized by their needs. Again, her solution is to completely ignore him and go her own way, because he is oppressing her (!??!)

I think Sasha just uses men for her own needs and if any defy her or stand up for themselves they get villanized and she is victimized. If this is what passes for feminism it is shameful. I have many other beefs with this book, but I will stop here.

5 people found this helpful

Alan A. Elsner

The roots of women's liberation exposed and explained

Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2012

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If you want to understand the roots and causes of the Women's Liberation movement that sprung to life in the 1960s, this novel would be a good place to start. By the time it was published in 1972, things were already beginning to change. And now of course, girls are outdoing boys and women men in almost every sphere, to the extent that we are reading about the "death of men and masculinity." In that sense, this book is a kind of time capsule.

Sasha, the heroine, is an intelligent woman who grows up in a middle class family in a suburb of Cleveland in the 1950s. But early on, she understands that no other fate is possible for her other than marriage and motherhood. And in order to achieve that, she has to be beautiful. "By the third grade, with every other girl in Baybury Heights, I came to realize that there was only one things worth bothering about: becoming beautiful."

Sasha does become beautiful -- but she's never fully convinced that she is. Self-disgust is always lurking, ready to to take over her mind. She also grabs on the idea that her beauty will have faded and be over by the time she hits 30. This makes her desperate and she responds by giving herself sexually pretty much to any man that asks. From age 15, when she is crowned Prom Queen, Sasha seems to feel that she has only one thing to give -- which is sex. Occasionally she manages to resist the most loathsome suitors but more often, without joy or pleasure, she succumbs.

Incidentally all the men in this book are portrayed with withering contempt, including both of her husbands. Men are seen as without exception as borderline rapists (and sometimes they cross the border). They take what they regard as theirs without consideration -- just because it's the way it's always been. Sex is a form of power rather than intimacy and everyone, including Sasha's, parents, conspires to keep the system the way it is.

Sasha drifts from one rotten affair to another in America and Europe. She marries a boring history professor, eventually wriggles free of him only to fall into the arms of a second husband who seems more sympathetic until the two children arrive, at which point he is revealed as a selfish and self-indulgent bully not that much different from the rest.

It's kind of hard to like Sasha because she doesn't much like herself. And she is a bit of a quitter too. She doesn't really fight -- she leaves. She makes scant effort to gain the career her talents deserve and though she rebels intellectually against the system, her rebellion never takes the form of action.

This is an interesting and entertaining novel and a revealing slice of social history. It could have used a more feisty heroine -- but perhaps it would not then have been so honest.

9 people found this helpful

Susan Koppelman

Almost a half century after my first reading I can only say it's even better than I remembered. And I loved it the first time!

Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2014

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The things I remembered most vividly from my early reading included the college student's epiphany and subsequent construction of the time line. (I'm not going into detail because for those who read this review who haven't read the book, I want to save the details for their discovery when they do read the book), the "pantsing" episode, and Sasha's loneliness regardless of which set of characters she is with and whatever activities are going on. I loved and resonated with all of these things again and this time noticed more closely the on-going autopsy of the marriage/no marriage, children/no children quandary. We who were early women's liberation activists and advocates have often been criticized for not paying attention and not giving respect and honor to women who chose to be mothers. A reading of this book makes clear how wrong, how inattentive, that criticism is. Recognizing and acknowledging that by our children we are held hostage does not mean we didn't honor those (among whom most of us counted ourselves eventually) who did have children. I don't remember reading any book by any of the early second wave feminists in which that combination of love and fear is made more explicit. But what I loved most about the book then and now is the intelligence that underlies it. We read about all sorts of awakenings in here but where it is about sex or social condition about gender performativity or comparative cultures what I cherish most is the brilliance of the mind recording and questioning and thinking about it all.

I've read some of the very critical or snarky or disinterested reviews by contemporary readers and I was shocked by them. I guess those readers wouldn't understand the context of 19th century novels any better than they understand Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen but at least they would understand that they were reading about a time and social reality different from their own. It's sad to see them talk about a book that seems to have been assigned reading but for which they have no context.

7 people found this helpful

DT

How far we've come but not far enough

Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2016

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What a great feminist book, and by “feminist” I don’t mean the exclusion of men, I mean an understanding of the experience of being a woman not that long ago. Sasha grew up in the 40s and 50s. Life was very different for women then, and they didn’t have the choices we have now. Most women married and had children and stayed home to be homemakers. If they went to college, it was to find a husband. Sasha is obsessed with being beautiful throughout her life because that was the biggest source of power for a woman. She studies philosophy in college, travels to Europe, and delays marriage and children. She wants to be independent but craves the validation of men. She constantly struggles with her vanity and her conflicting desire to be free. How far we’ve come but not far enough. Women are still not paid equal pay and the Equal Rights Amendment, which was defeated in the 70s, was never passed. Women are not equal under the Constitution. I think a lot of people don’t realize this little fact. Sasha’s story ended abruptly and I hoped she’d accomplish more, as I hope women continue to achieve more and keep moving forward in the desire to be treated equally in this country and the world.

5 people found this helpful

Alberto Vargas

Just what I expected it to be

Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2008

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I was told that this book would provide insight into how young good looking women look at the world. The book does not disappoint in this regard. The inner thoughts of the female protagonist are exposed, and they ring true. Her issues around growing up, high school, dating, sex, marriage, infidelity abortion, children - it is all in there. Best of all, the book is written in a timeless manner - you would not know the time period if the author did not mention it; it could just as well be taking place today.

Unfortunately, as a literary novel, this book is mediocre at best, unlike what some of the other reviewers may say. At the time it was published, it was no doubt a masterpiece of the womens liberation movement, mostly for its shock value, but that effect has worn off. This book has mostly anthropological value.

One person found this helpful

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Memoirs Of An Ex Prom Queen Paperback – Sept. 18 1997

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About the author

Alix Kates Shulman

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Follow the author

Memoirs Of An Ex Prom Queen Paperback – Sept. 18 1997

Product details

About the author

Alix Kates Shulman

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Top reviews from Canada

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Top reviews from other countries