The Grasinski Girls: The Choices They Had and the Choices They Made

By Mary Patrice Erdmans

Book Overview

The Grasinski Girls were working-class Americans of Polish descent, born in the 1920s and 1930s, who created lives typical of women in their day. They went to high school, married, and had children. For the most part, they stayed home to raise their children. And they were happy doing that. They took care of their appearance and their husbands, who took care of them. Like most women of their generation, they did not join the women's movement, and today they either reject or shy away from feminism.

Basing her account on interviews with her mother and aunts, Mary Erdmans explores the private lives of these white, Christian women in the post-World War II generation. She compares them, at times, to her own postfeminist generation. Situating these women within the religious routines that shaped their lives, Professor Erdmans explores how gender, class, ethnicity, and religion shaped the choices the Grasinski sisters were given as well as the choices they made. These women are both acted upon and actors; they are privileged and disadvantaged; they resist and surrender; they petition the Lord and accept His will.

The Grasinski Girls examines the complexity of ordinary lives, exposing privileges taken for granted as well as nuances of oppression often overlooked. Erdmans brings rigorous scholarship and familial insight to bear on the realities of twentieth-century working-class white women in America.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0821415824
• ISBN13: 9780821415825
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 0.93 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Great Book

Being a 4th generation Polish American this book gave me better understanding of my previous generations. My realatives grew up in the same time and west side area of Grand Rapids, MI as the Grasinski's. This book shed light and gave answers to the questions I have wondered of my families past generations. The unique traits and values I find in these women are ones that I carry myself as a modern day women being of Polish herritage. The history and facts given in this book where excellent in regards to the Polish immigrants settling in Grand Rapids, MI and the life they established here. Which can still be seen in the beautiful historic Catholic churches that stand there today in a now diverse community.

A Fine Book

I picked this book up just to glance at it without intending to read it. I read the first two pages and was hooked and completed the entire book several days later. What hooked me was Mary Erdmans' engaging style of writing about how class, gender, ethnicity and religion intersected in defining the post-World War II experience of her large Polish-American family. The author, a sociologist, focused on her mother and five aunts with extensive, sensitive interviews. She knew that sociologists, including feminist ones, had written critically about the experience of women like them who raised families in working class suburbs with manicured lawns. Her subjects though, contrary to some feminist views, did not see themselves as having led oppressed lives of quiet desperation. At the same time their lives involved unique challenges and struggles. This is an especially good book for anyone interested in the Polish-American experience, feminism, or the American working class.

The choices they had and the choices they made

Mary Erdman's book is a wonderful read for both the academic and the non-academic alike. Her unique form of using oral history to examine a very understudied but nevertheless vital part of American history, allows women from all backgrounds to find truth in the story of the Grasinski Girls. A great addition to the library of any woman.