Dallas Public Library

My unsentimental education, Debra Monroe

eng

autobiography

no index present

non fiction

My unsentimental education

905685807

Debra Monroe

Georgia series in literary nonfiction

"A misfit in Spooner, Wisconsin with its farms, bars, and strip joints, Debra Monroe leaves to earn a degree, then another, another, and builds a career--if only because her plans to be a Midwestern housewife continually get scuttled. Her professional life improves because she's good at 'hard-core feigning.' Fearless but naive, she vaults over class barriers, but never quite leaves her past behind. When it comes to men, she's still blue-collar. Monroe pays careful attention to what love and sex mean to a 'liberated' woman: to the pressure to be assertive yet not too assertive; to different prices women pay for being 'sultry-powerful' or 'brainy-powerful.' Both the story of her steady rise into the professional class and a parallel history of unsuitable exes, this memoir reminds us how accidental even a good life can be. If Joan Didion advises us 'to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be,' Monroe takes this advice a step further and nods at the people she might have become but didn't. Funny, poignant, wise, My Unsentimental Education explores the confusion that ensues when a working class girl ends up far from where she began"--Provided by publisher

Prologue -- History and practical math -- Regional trades -- On the down-low -- Drinks are on the house -- Intermission -- In the event of an apocalypse -- Serfs and landlords -- Depredating deer -- A dress rehearsal -- Epilogue