Keeping Secrets

Lyons, Mary E. Keeping Secrets: The Girlhood Diaries of Seven Women Writers. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 1995.

Annotation: Mary Lyons presents brief biographies of seven turn-of-the-century American women, all authors and diary-keepers. The secrets these women only revealed to their diaries are her focus.

Justification for rejection: This is a decently organized, well written book. Showing great depth of understanding, Mary Lyons draws clear, seamless connections between the prevailing social attitudes of the times and some of the pivotal life events of her subjects. The author used the women's original diaries as source materials whenever possible, providing a well-researched peek into their private thoughts. The "peek", however, serves as a major shortcoming. The excerpts she includes are exceedingly brief - often just one or two words, rarely even a complete sentence. I was left frustrated by this and wanting more. Even a well-chosen paragraph or two per woman would have let me hear their individual voices and aided my own interpretation. Instead, Mary Lyons keeps the reins in her own hands. Thus, while the theme of finding and developing one's identity and voice amidst formidable opposition offers developmental appeal to teen readers, her unwillingness to let the reader fully in on the "secrets" themselves prevents me from nominating it.

In spite of my rejection, the book has much to offer teens with a specific interest in either the history of women's rights and/or the biographies of writers. The awe-inspiring lives of the admirable women included in this book are contextualized into other important events in American history, such as the Civil War, Jim Crow, the Harlem Renaissance, and the spread of yellow fever. A good read, but not for everybody.

Genre: Nonfiction/biography/multicultural.