The Girls Who Went Away, Ann Fessler
The Girls Who Went Away, Ann Fessler
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The Girls Who Went Away
The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade

Author: Ann Fessler

Narrator: Coleen Marlo

Unabridged: 12 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/08/2016

Synopsis

In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out into the open for the first time the astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe v. Wade. An adoptee who was herself surrendered during those years and recently made contact with her mother, Fessler brilliantly brings to life the voices of more than a hundred women, as well as the spirit of those times, allowing the women to tell their stories in gripping and intimate detail.

About Ann Fessler

Ann Fessler is a professor of photography at Rhode Island School of Design, where she has taught since 1993. Her critically acclaimed The Girls Who Went Away was chosen as one of the top five nonfiction books of 2006 by the National Book Critics Circle, and was awarded the Ballard Book Prize, given annually to a female author who advances the dialogue about women's rights. In 2011, The Girls Who Went Away was chosen by Ms. magazine readers as one of the top 100 feminist books of all time.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Laura on July 05, 2019

Like so many others who reviewed this book, it brought me to tears. Tears of remembrance, for I became a birthmother in 1961, "persuaded" to surrender my son for adoption "for his own good." But I did not have the luxury of a maternity home to hide in -- those things were expensive, and I was 19, ma......more

Goodreads review by Ashley on July 28, 2017

This wasn't a book I expected to surprise me, but it did. This is one of those times I'm so glad I'm a part of the online book community, because I never would have heard of this book otherwise, and it was a very worthwhile reading experience. I wouldn't have known what I was missing, of course, but......more

Goodreads review by Ann on July 19, 2014

Oh my! When I had an abortion at 19, a friend who was pregnant at the same time surrendered her child for adoption. Thirty years later I got a letter from her telling me of her anguish and agony looking for her daughter, whom she finally found, after 15 years of searching, in The Netherlands. The da......more

Goodreads review by Larry on April 05, 2021

It is nine years later and this time I am listening to this as an audible book while I follow along with Kindle. I am just as touched by it as I was the first time. This is a book filled with honesty and deep feelings predominately from women who had this experience when they were very young. And fo......more

Goodreads review by Katie on October 24, 2011

Since I'm not a mom, my opinion of this book can't be wholly trusted, but nonetheless, here it is: Fessler compiled personal accounts from women who got pregnant out of wedlock in the 50s and 60s and had their children taken from them under the guise of "voluntary adoption." Every single one of these......more

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