Kathleen Hirsch is the author of Songs from the Alley (NPP, 1998) and A Home in the Heart of the City (NPP, 1998). She lives with her family in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.
A classic theme in women's literature is the reexamination of life at the onset of middle age. Through her friendships with a variety of women, journalist and feminist activist Hirsch (Songs from the Alley, A Home in the Heart of the City) shares her insights into learning to live meaningfully after the age of 40. The term Sabbath, in the context of this book, is not connected to the formal religious day of rest; rather, it includes whatever activities are involved in "layering one thread at a time, working the pattern. It is bringing the ordinary to the quiet, insistent desire of the spirit. The work of one's day becomes whole, a source of affirmation." Hirsch's retreat from strident feminism into a world of gardening, art, poetry, and thoughtful child rearing gave her special insights she shares here. Unfortunately, most women do not have the opportunity to contemplate life at the pace or in the depth she describes. For collections specializing in woman's issues. Olga B. Wise, Compaq Computer Corp., Austin, TX Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
At age 40, successful journalist and author Hirsch (Home in the Heart of the City) underwent a spiritual meltdown that left her struck by how, in her myopic focus on work, she had let the replenishing power of contemplating beauty slip away from her. Having watched her mother forsake her artistic ambitions to raise her children, the young, feminist Hirsch determined to fully realize her career aspirations But her fear of being subsumed by motherhood created other problems: "Beneath the structure imposed by my work, my life has no shape." Her brother's sudden death heightened her inchoate sense of emptiness, setting Hirsch on a path toward "wholeness," which she defines as a confluence of work, relationships and a quest for "Self." Among other life changes, she decided (with her husband) to have a baby, and unapologetically presents the contradictions in her choices. New motherhood, for instance, complicates her quest for "Self": "I became a divided self.... Work became objectified.... So... have my relationships." Hirsch sometimes ignores the socioeconomic privilege that allowed her to stop working to rediscover herself, and confesses envy of her minimum-wage Honduran child minder for "integrating spirit, heart, and... labors." Still, this often astute and beautiful blend of feminism and postfeminism holds some insights for women schooled in the 1970s counterculture who feel unfulfilled on the proving grounds of the patriarchy, as well as for older first-time mothers. (Apr. 18) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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