Offering a frank and observant look at gender, education,
and identity at a critical juncture in the author's--and
America's--development, Babes in Boyland brings to life a
pivotal moment in the history of co-education. It was a
time in which hostility to women was still rife
(fraternity house banners at Dartmouth read "Better Dead
than Co-Ed"), but one that promised equal education to
promising young women. Gina Barreca entered Dartmouth
College as a freshman in 1975, a few short years after the
college became co-educational. As a working-class girl of
Italian-French Canadian descent raised in Brooklyn and
Long Island, Barreca's looks and style set her apart from
Dartmouth's blonder, better-heeled undergraduate majority.
Barreca's story begins with a snapshot of her parents--
their courtship and marriage, her father's six-day work
week sewing bedspreads and curtains in New York City's
garment district, and her mother's death from lung and
bone cancer a year before Gina receives news of her
acceptance to Dartmouth. With the dubious blessing of her
Italian aunts ("New Hampshire? You gonna go to school in
New Hampshire?"), she leaves Long Island for Hanover,
chauffered by her father in their 1967 Buick Skylark. His
parting words of advice become a recurring mantra for the
anxious freshman: "You can always take the next bus
home."Surveying the campus on her arrival, Barreca is
overcome with a paralyzing sense of inadequacy. But as
freshman year gets underway, she makes friends, starts an
unofficial sorority (Tau Iota Tau, or TIT) and begins to
discover the joys of a first-rate education. Over the next
three and a half years, self-consciousness gives way to
self-confidence as she tests her wit, intellect, and
sexuality in an environment more open to self-expression
than her hometown.Barreca takes the reader to fraternity
parties, dorm gossip sessions, working-class dives,
classrooms and dorm rooms. She chronicles the delight of
her first romance, the humiliation of her first C-plus,
and the first stirrings of feminist consciousness. Her
tale winds up in London, where she spent her last
semester, choosing to graduate ahead of her class with no
formal ceremony. Distancing herself from graduation in
this way underscores Barreca's mixed feelings about her
experiences at Dartmouth College, experiences that
continue to inspire, haunt, and shape her writing, her
teaching, and her life."In retrospect, I think I both
exploited and evaded the confines of the role of working-
class-kid on campus. True, I saw social and economic
spikes everywhere and rushed to impale myself on them, but
I also, in time, came to accept that the education and
experience were mine for good . . . A good education can
be subversive, even when it apparently endorses
conventional moral and cultural doctrines. I suspect,
therefore, that only a very good education could have
prepared me to be a troublemaker. I came to Hanover
fearing trouble. I left looking for it." --From the Book
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy