First published 2023
Drew Gilpin Faust grows up as a privileged white girl in conservative, segregated Virginia during the 1950s. Her family expects her to embrace willful blindness toward racial inequities and accept the constraints placed on women. The postwar world around her churns with nuclear threats, shifting social hierarchies, and the aftermath of two world wars and economic depression. Her parents and society demand she become "well adjusted" and fill the role of a poised young lady. But Faust finds both female subordination and racial privilege intolerable. She discovers that resistance becomes the necessary price of survival. Through the 1960s, her love of learning drives her toward active engagement in civil rights, student, and antiwar movements. She forges her own path during a decade of rapid change and fierce reaction. The story culminates in the upheavals of 1968, as Faust transforms from an expected Southern belle into someone who would later become a historian of the very conflicts that shaped her world.
Genres: 20th-century, biography-memoir, activism, american-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, resistance, transformation
Setting: Virginia, United States
Period: 1950s, 1960s
320 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Content warnings: racism, sexism