Women together, women alone

In 1973, 80,000 to 100,000 women across the country belonged to small feminist groups, most of which met for a process known as consciousness-raising. Once a week, women shared their thoughts, feelings, fears, and intimacies with more abandon than at any other time before or since. But by the mid-seventies, the majority of these groups had disbanded, victims of changing times. In the years since, the women who once belonged to CR groups have changed as much as the times: What happened to these women? Where are they now? And why do they feel that the grass-roots feminist movement that nurtured them fifteen-years ago has lost its power to do so now? Women Together, Women Alone answers these questions in part through the stories of seven women in one CR group, who gather at a reunion in 1987. We meet Sandi, once a Barbie Doll housewife beset by inexplicable depressions, today a mother and a attorney... Catherime, the divorced single woman... J.J., who wondered then and now what the movement could offer minority and poor women. And we confront issues they first explored over a decade ago - Sex and Marriage, Work and Motherhood, Self-Image, Political Activism, the state of the Women's Movement - and many issues particular to today. Their struggles and successes paint an unforgettable picture of the women we once were, and the women we've become. To place these individual stories in a broader context, Anita Shreve interviewed nearly a hundred other women nationwide, and, in chapters that alternate with her narrative, she examines the changing political climate and shifting priorities that contributed to the diffusion of the Women's Movement. The testimony of her witnesses offer compelling evidence that women today may be as isolated as they once were - a trend Shreve seeks to counter with her blueprint for a "second wave" consciousness-raising. A provocative work of popular history, Women Together, Women Alone, is also a deeply moving and personal account of seven lives. It will touch not only every woman of the conciousness-raising generation, but also every woan striving today to find a way to live in a world where old rules are gone and new rules have not yet been invented.