I really enjoyed this book's take on the concept of what it means to be a woman. I have used some of these ideas in the Women's History class that I teach. What an asset!

This was a fantastic foray into how women as a class have been defined over four centuries of American history, looking at the intersection of race, class, and sexuality in defining the contours of womanhood and who was excluded from It. A great reading experience for both lay readers, and those with more experience on the topic. Faderman does a great job moving from the broader social movements and historical trends, to intersperse them with the lives of individual women across the spectrum of experience, allowing her to highlight the contradictions of even those who stood against women's movements.

I was a bit worried at first, considering my recent luck with academic books that are geared towards the broader public. But this wasn't the case at all with Faderman's book. And I think the key reason for this is the fact that Faderman treats women as a class. Even when she is explaining how the meaning of womanhood was negotiated across the centuries and across different groups, she still makes it a point to understand the experiences of women as defined by their gender, rather than simply arguing for the way their differences undermined a single understanding of what it means to be woman.

An engrossing and informative read, that I appreciated very deeply.

Written in Faderman's inimitably readable style, this is a fascinating overview of what is has meant to be "a woman" in America through the ages.

Lillian Faderman is an award-winning gender and sexuality scholar who has won many literary awards including seven Lambda Literary Awards, two Stonewall Book Awards, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for her published works on the history of gender and sexuality.

In Woman: The American History of an Idea, Faderman shares a 400 year history of what it means to be a woman in America in private and public ways. I appreciated the intersectionality and nuance she included in her research as well as the commitment Faderman makes towards amplifying the experiences of indigenous women, enslaved women, and trans women.

With Mother’s Day approaching it brought up a lot to be reminded of why Black motherhood is so revolutionary:

“Motherhood was central to the eighteenth-century ideal of woman among whites, but enslaved women had no control over how they could be mothers to their children.”

This entire chapter had me in tears and I had to put the book down and return to it when I felt ready.

While the book is academic, it reads more like a timeline of events with a powerful storytelling element as the idea of “woman” gets fleshed out from the 17th Century to the present day. As someone who went to an all women's college I learned a lot about the history of Mount Holyoke and the sister colleges across America. I didn’t know that the Cherokee National Council consulted with MHC to develop the first Cherokee Female Seminary to train full and mixed blood Cherokee women and educate the children. There was so much new learning for me and so much of what I’ve known put in greater context. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Women's Studies and the history of Women’s Colleges.

This is not the first book that tries to tell the story of American women from pre-Columbian America to the present day. In fact, there are many out there, but let me say a word on why this one should be the place to start and should be the gold standard in current historiography.

Lillian Faderman does an excellent job looking at women's history from the history of how that concept is defined. It is more than just private vs public sphere or working woman vs housewife. By focusing the lens on how the definition of "woman" has changed over time, she is able to take a much more comprehensive view of history than has ever been done before.

One challenge of the new social history is how to tell a diverse story that does not compartmentalize different groups' stories and treat them as categories that need to be addressed in each time period. Faderman integrates the stories of much more than the typical "American woman" (white). Here, black women appear in the section on the Great Depression, and Mexican American women appear in World War II. The way that Faderman pulls in different groups of women into a larger narrative is masterpiece history.

Not only that, but she does an excellent job of "zooming in and out." There are stories of large groups of people, but she uses individuals' stories as evidence of her larger thesis. What is true for the whole is true for individuals, again, making for excellent history.

Please read this book. You will gain an appreciation for a deep and rich history over the struggle of women and how they define themselves and how others define them.

The author traces the evolution of what it means to be a “woman” in America, from the arrival of the Puritans down to the present-day. The book is meticulously researched, & the author strives to show the differing experiences of white women to those of BIPOC communities & their experiences of intersectionality between race & misogyny. I think the author has captured accurately the 'three steps forward & two steps back dance' that has dogged the advancement of women's rights & equality since the beginning.

I would advise reading this in short bursts as the reminder of the constant misogyny throughout history is strong - I read it as one would read a fiction book & I had to keep stopping, & returning once I had calmed down enough to continue. If I had to venture one criticism, it would be that the final chapter on the most recent events seemed to be whirled through compared to all the other time periods.

My thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Yale University Press, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

A timely book for Women's History Month. Faderman provides a detailed history of the concept of what constitutes womanhood. Starting from the earliest days of colonial America to the present 21st century #MeToo era, you get the evolution of how society viewed women. While I found this book extremely interesting and enlightening, I also came away with the feeling that the more things change, the more things stay the same. Women have come a long way in many respects, yet we still face many of the same chauvinistic, sexist attitudes that have existed since Biblical times. Despite this, "Woman: The American History of An Idea" is definitely a worthwhile read and an excellent addition to the library of women's history literature.

The title of this excellent book tells a reader just what to expect. This is an academic title that will talk about the concept and history of women over the course of 400 years of American history.

This title explores women’s experiences and the ways in which expectations for them could often be defined by others. Readers will also discover when and how women began to define their lives and experiences for themselves.

The author is a professor and she knows her subject well. She is also able to engage the reader and does so, right from the introduction, when she talks about her JHS, her sexual identity, and her having been raised by an unmarried mother. Professor Faderman notes the disconnect between her experience and the 1950s woman as portrayed on TV in the personage of a June Cleaver or a Donna Reed.

When Professor Faderman made her way into a PhD program, she chose to study women in America. One result of that decision is this book. Professor Faderman examines the ways in which women have been defined by both men and women and notes that, while some women wanted more (the vote, for example), others did not.

This is an engaging, interesting and absorbing study that moves from the seventeenth century to the present day. I highly recommend it.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher. All opinions are my own.

This book will be published on 15 Mar 2022.