Review of: A Singular Woman

A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother by Janny Scott

I did my usual self-edit of a biography. When I found fact-filled sections of the book that I deemed to be irrelevant to my intellectual purpose, I skipped and/or skimmed those passages. Learning about Stanley Ann Dunham's life was an amazing journey into the mind of a woman who was ahead of her time. This book demonstrates the different expectations American society places on the role of "good mothers" and "good fathers." Women are always judged more harshly in the role of parent, and it's simply NOT fair. Any father who had done the same thing that Dunham did- pursue her career in anthropology- would not be labeled a bad father. He would simply be a normal father.

I loved this passage from the book:

One of Ann's stories- at least as one colleague remembered it- concerned a group of village women from Africa and Indonesia. On some earlier occasion, Ann had invited them to get together to talk about their lives. During a discussion of similarities and differences, the Indonesian women mentioned an unusual practice. After childbirth, a woman would put a salt pack in her vagina, ostensibly to restore its firmness. The practice was painful, the women conceded. But it was thought to help women remain "young" for their husbands. The African women were incredulous: Why would a woman willingly inflict pain on herself? The Indonesian women- or so Ann told the story- asked, "What do you do, then, to be able to continue to please your husbands?" recalled the colleague who was present. "The African women all rolled about laughing and said, "We find a bigger man!"