Lisa Frederiksen Bohannon

This book follows the life of Betty Freidan from childhood to the publication of her autobiography in 2000. Betty had a difficult relationship with her mother as a young girl whom she believed was due to her mother’s unhappiness with her role as a housewife. Betty wanted something different for herself. She went to college and majored in psychology. She married and had three children. Throughout her life Betty worked to help women gain equal rights by writing books and articles and by founding and chairing organizations like NOW. History teachers can this book as a way to introduce students to many topics such as the Great Depression and McCarthyism. Students can research the way Jews were treated in America and the pogroms in Russia. They can also locate the many places that Betty Freidan lived. Science teachers can have students look at some of the diseases mention in the book such as bronchitis, colitis, and asthma. They can also research any of the psychologist mentioned in chapter three and explain his or her theory. Math teachers can have the students conduct a survey similar to the one that Freidan did, tally the results, and create a graph or chart of their results. English teachers can have students read The Feminine Mystic and write an opinion on it. They can also research any of the women rights activist mentioned in the book and write a short biography on him or her. Students can also write an essay on whether there is still evidence of sexism in America today. The sentence structure is easy to understand, but some of the topics maybe difficult for young students to comprehend. The author uses chronological order to tell the story of her life. The book contains black and white photographs of Betty Freidan throughout her life. The author also includes a table of contents, a timeline of her accomplishments, a section listing the source of each quote, websites, an index, and a bibliography. One of the sources that Bohannon used was Freidan’s autobiography. This book may be useful to use for research on Betty Freidan or feminism, but it may not be very useful for a read aloud because parts of the book can be a bit dull. Some paragraphs just lists a bunch of factual information but make no real connection with the reader… (més)