t's a shame that the world lost her voice so early when she was locked in a mental institution until her death, all because she spoke too loudly.
I simply enjoyed reading this !!

I was very interested in reading this book. Something about the title and the cover called to me. For most of the book though, I kept wanting more in terms of a sensory experience. I found the writing almost too straightforward and lacking in descriptive details. This created a flat experience for me when, given the subject matter, I should have felt more emotion and awe. I was compelled to finish reading even though I didn’t love the book. So, I guess that’s saying something—the reviews led me to believe I would enjoy this more than I did. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I received a complementary copy in exchange for an honest review. This memoir makes it clear that not all pioneer families were like the Laura Ingalls Wilder's family. Gertrude Beasley's story is harsh and hard to read. Her writing style is a bit rambling and hard to follow but it makes it clear that old time kids were basically the same as today's kids. Back then they still cussed, talked about sexual things and caused trouble. Not much has changed although many may look at the past with rose-colored glasses.

Getrude Beasley grew up in Taxas under severe poverty, family dysfunction, Incest and Rape. It is an incredible story that she tells. She has a very blunt style and just comes out with the facts as she remembers them. At only 4 years old, her brothers were trying to sexually assault her. This continues throughout her childhood. That she still sees beauty in the world, describing Spring, with flowers and her mother capturing a hummingbird is quite extraordinary. The things she endured and the way both her parent’s behaved certainly did not forbade a positive outcome for her.

It appears that school saved Gertrude. She absolutely loved going and was fiercely intelligent. She was curious and opinionated as well. She just continues to do anything to keep learning and does extremely well. She graduates from college and becomes an educator. She speaks out about fairness and equality in pay for women. She is interested in socialism and feminism. Clearly, her thoughts are way ahead of their time.

The book is especially interesting because this was written in 1925, so you come to understand the influences of her culture around her at that point. She speaks the way someone from her background would, but does become very educated and learns about the world. She travels and meets different types of people and seems to enjoy her life.

So, her only crime and indecency was speaking the truth about how her life unfolded. Discussing awful incidents of incest certainly was not acceptable at this time period. So, Getrude was violated at a young age and then blamed again since she had the audacity to speak of these incidents.

Her book was published in 1925, but mostly banned everywhere. Much later, a very limited release of about 500 copies was released in the 1990’s, but it was not well circulated and was banned then, too. This is a story that should be told. It is in contrast to many stories that came out speaking of this time period in a romanticized way. She did not live a Norman Rockwell life.

I wish there was more information about Gertrude Beasley. She was exiled from London after being in a psychiatric facility. Then she was in The Central Islip Psychiatric Center, I believe this came to be known as Pilgram’s State Psychiatric Hospital. I lived very close to this facility and it is not a place one would want to spend their days. It was well known for awful abuses to it’s patients. Exactly why Gertrude was there from 35 yrs until her death at 63 yrs remains unclear. Other then some references that seemed to suggest she had anxiety, she seemed quite rational and sane. This is remarkable after her life experiences. I think her ‘Mental Illness’ was being outspoken, brave and true to herself. So, she was silenced.

Thank you NetGalley, Gertrude Beasley, and Sourcebooks for giving me a copy of this book. I found the material to be very interesting.

Gertrude Beasley has written a raw memoir of her life growing up on the frontier. Sharing her life with her parents both with significant problems and the horrific stories of her brothers who sexually assaulted her.Gertrude new education was her way out and she succeeded in escaping her childhood .
Her life story will shock you and amaze that she did overcome her childhood to become an independent strong woman a foreign correspondent and a advocate for women’s rights-netgalley #sourcebooks

BOOK FEATURE - Banned Books Week

"This is the searing opening to Edna "Gertrude" Beasley's raw and scathing memoir, originally published in Paris in 1925 but ultimately suppressed and lost to history as a banned book—until now. Only five-hundred copies were printed, very few of which made it into readers' hands, having been confiscated by customs inspectors or removed from bookshelves by Texas law enforcement."

This book had a limited release in the 80's but still was a legend since most of the copies had been destroyed. Because it talked about birth control and female's sexual freedom. Think of where we would be if more women were able to have written their words cause she opened that door, but that door was slammed shut.

Gertrude Beasley was never heard from again after she was extradited from England to America. In the prologue after some digging through old records she was found to have been admitted into a mental asylum and had died at the age of 63 of pancreatic cancer. The lengths they go to to silence women and keep the narrative at a fantasy standard is horrific.

This book is a biography of the author's life being born into a large family in poverty in Texas. This book discusses sexual abuse, sexual feelings, birth control, politics in the school system, women's rights, fair pay, and so much more. There was nothing off limits as a topic, it was a vent of frustration being born into the least and trying to be a successful person but continually hitting these glass ceilings.

Though this was very empowering with womens rights and basically whistleblowing on the patriarchal and hypocritical system. This was only women's rights for white women at the time.

There was a thread of hope that she was making change that she couldn't be touched and she was a powerful voice. And that last line of the book it broke my heart. We all are just looking for someone, our someone. After all that shit she went through she was stuck in one of those horror asylums.

Thank you sourcebooks and netgalley for my honest and voluntary review.

TW: Sexual assault, racially insensitive language, incest, beastiality

Reading someone else's memoir set in a time not our own, with challenges so different from those we know and so hideously worse compared to what we decry as unbearable is definitely the correct way to reappraise our own lives. Beasley was steeped in the discrimination of the society she grew up in, in Texas, and that discrimination was inherent to the structure of the social hierarchy and the mindset of the people. She was both a practitioner and a sufferer of discrimination. An incapable father, in her life, had far more detrimental outcomes than an incapable father may have in other families. She was a heroine in the fight against discrimination against women and she eventually lost that fight. Or did she? One can argue she did not lose, not when her memoir can be read. The memoir is why they shut her up to die. 5 stars because this memoir HAD to be written, and it was written well!

In her memoir, My First Thirty Years, Texas native Gertrude Beasley (1892-1955) gives an unsettling account of her loveless, impoverished family's life on the frontier. Her father is a selfish, violent man and her mother is a master manipulator. Beasley's horrifying earliest memories are of being raped by her older brothers. As she grows up, Beasley works hard at menial tasks to contribute to the family's financial well-being, but, as she frequently complains, her shiftless brothers and sisters (of which there were many), did nothing to help their mother.

Unlike her siblings, Beasley values education, and, like Laura Ingalls Wilder, trains as an elementary schoolteacher as a teenager. The comparison to Wilder made in the volume's introduction is particularly apt, because the Beasley family are the polar opposites of the Ingalls family. But unlike Laura Ingalls Wilder, eventually Beasley earns a master’s degree at the University of Chicago and becomes a feminist and socialist.

The significance of this rambling and somewhat disjointed narrative is more historical than literary. Nonetheless, this book is important as an anecdote to romanticized notions of the Wild West.

I received an electronic pre-publication copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I was not compensated in any way.

My First Thirty Years

Full feature for this title will be posted at: @queensuprememortician on Instagram!