Black eye : escaping a marriage, writing a life / Judith Strasser.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Strasser, Judith, 1944-

Series:

ACLS Humanities E-Book.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Strasser, Judith, 1944---Marriage.

Strasser, Judith.

Kingsley, Stu--Marriage.

Kingsley, Stu.

Married people--United States--Biography.

Married people.

Dysfunctional families--United States.

Dysfunctional families.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 350 p. )

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Madison : University of Wisconsin Press, c2004.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Seventeen years after she married, Judith Strasser escaped her emotionally and physically abusive husband and sought a better way to live. In the process, Strasser rediscovered what she had suppressed through that long span of time: exceptional strength and a passion for writing. Black Eye includes excerpts from a journal Strasser kept from 1985 to1986, the year she made the decision to leave her marriage, and present-day commentary on the journal passages and her family history. Strasser works like a detective investigating her own life, drawing clarity and power from journal passages, dreams, and memories that originally emerged from confusion and despair. With language that is both insightful and poetic, she reveals the psychological and social circumstances that led a "strong" woman, an intelligent and politically active feminist, to become an emotionally dependent, abused wife. Not coincidentally, the same year that Strasser finally found the courage to leave her husband, she also reclaimed her creative voice. Newly empowered and energized by this enormous life change, Strasser began writing again after twenty-five silent years dominated by her mother's illness and death, her own cancer, and her painful, fearful marriage. Black Eye is one of the fruits of this creative reawakening. Strasser's writing is refreshingly honest and instantly engrossing. Not shy of wretchedness or beauty, Strasser's story is bitterly personal, ultimately triumphant, and inspiring to all who deal with the adversity that is part of human life.

Contents:

Unpleasant truths

Questions of politics

Intimate strangers

Losses

True colors

Clear vision

Standards of performance

Selective attention

Tokens of love

Diffidence

"I Jumped for it"

Jekyll and Hyde

Halcyon days

Cause and effect

Trouble on its way

Enormous rage

The gift.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (347-348).

ISBN:

9786612269516

9781282269514

1282269518

9780299199333

0299199339

OCLC:

816166174

Publisher Number:

2027/heb06611 hdl