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Sunshine for
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Fuentes, one of the pioneers of the Second Wave of the American Women's Movement, tells the story of her life and her family in a series of about 50 witty, poignant, and, at times, humorous vignettes that richly capture profound insights into human nature.
To give you a feel of the stories in this book, I would like to reproduce one story in its entirety here before giving short extracts from other stories.
Sometimes I think our mass education in this country is a mixed blessing. Our years of schooling seem to take something from us: a drive, a dream, a push toward life -- and the willingness to act irrationally and outside the bounds of acceptable behavior. It leaves us eggheads and thinkers, not doers. It leaves us as passive acceptors of life, rather than fighters for a cause. We know too much to take a chance.
Fortunately, my father was not so handicapped: he was not even tainted. He had never gotten as far as kindergarten in Piltz, so he'd never learned to accept what life brought to him: instead, he fought for what he wanted.
My father taught me the uses of irrationality and emotionalism one summer in the '50s. My parents and I were scheduled to fly from Miami to Long Beach to visit Hermann [Sonia's brother] and his family. My father wanted to drive and save some money but remembering difficult times we'd had with him on the road; we persuaded him to go by plane.
We arrived at the airport forty-five minutes before our 8:45 AM scheduled departure only to learn that the flight was canceled due to mechanical failure. We were told we would be given first-class seats on another carrier at no additional expense. I could almost taste the gourmet food when we were next advised that the first-class flight was completely booked and that the first available flight was a coach flight that was due to depart at 2:00 PM. This caused quite a bit of consternation among the passengers. One elegant woman was particularly distressed, She was due to connect with a cruise ship leaving for Europe and would be unable to make her connection.
Mother and I accepted the change in plans with equanimity. After all, we had no plans that required our presence in Long Beach at any particular time. We wondered, however, what our best course of action would be: should we drive home and come back later or just wait in the terminal for the 5 1/2 hours? We decided to settled down and wait for the flight.
But not Father. "I told you I wanted to drive," he said, "You just can't trust those planes." He could not accept the fact that we wouldn't be leaving at 8:45AM as scheduled. Finally, he made up his mind: he would get his money back and drive to Long Beach as he wanted to do in the first place. He began to race around the terminal, cursing the airlines in a loud voice, accosting airline officials, and generally proving of extreme embarrassment to Mother and me. There was no holding him back. Mother and I were mortified to see him heading for the terminal manager's office, still voicing his complaints at the top of his lungs.
Five minutes later, Father was back with the manager, and we found ourselves being escorted to a waiting limousine. We were driven to an adjoining airstrip, where we were placed on a plane leaving for New York momentarily. The manager dispatched a telegram to Hermann, telling him of our arrival at a different airport in the New York area.
We were the only passengers from the 8:45 AM plane on that flight. Neither the elegant woman with the cruise connection nor any of the other passengers were to be seen. Mother and I were happy and grateful to be aboard. But not Father. He didn't know why we had to behind schedule and arriving at a different airport. As I said, he was uneducated. (pp. 98-99)
Writing of the mid-1960s Fuentes writes,
Married women could work outside the home only if dire household finances required it. Under no circumstances were they to earn more money than their husbands.
Women were not to be opinionated or assertive. They were expected to show an interest in fashion, books, ballet, cooking, sewing, knitting, and volunteer activities. Political activities were acceptable as long as they were conducted behind the scenes.
Of course, not all women were able or wanted to fit into this pattern, and there were always exceptions. But most women did what they were told because society exacted a high price from deviants.
Men, on the other hand, were the decision-makers and activists. They were the ones who became presidents, legislators, generals, police chiefs, school principals, and corporate executives. They were the heads of their households, and wives and children deferred to their wishes. Men were expected to take the initiative in dating, to have sexual experiences before marriage, to propose marriage, to bear the financial burden for the entire family, and to have little or nothing to do with running their households and raising their children. It was assumed that they would be insensitive, uncaring, and inarticulate -- and interested in activities such as sports, drinking, gambling, extramarital affairs, and making money.
Most men did what they were told, too.
This picture of our society was true for most of the population. There were, however, other dynamics at play in minority communities. Historically, for example, more African American women than men attended college. But for most Americans, this was the climate in which the [Equal Employment Opportunity] Commission and I, as a staff member, were supposed to eliminate sex discrimination.
Not only was the country unconcerned with sex discrimination, so were most of the people at the Commission. They had come there to fight racial discrimination: they did not want the Commission's time and money sidetracked into sex discrimination.
But the country and the EEOC were in for a shock. In the Commission's first fiscal year, about 37% of the complaints alleged sex discrimination, and there complaints raised a host of new issues that were more difficult than those raised by the complaints of race discrimination. Could employers continue to advertise in classified advertising columns headed "Help Wanted -- Male" and "Help Wanted -- Female"? Did they have to hire women for jobs traditionally reserved for men? Could airlines continue to ground or fire stewardesses when they married or reached the age of thirty-two or thirty-five? What about state protective laws that prohibited the employment of women in certain occupations, limited the number of hours they could work and the amount of weight they could lift, and required certain benefits for them, such as seats and rest periods? Did school boards have to keep teachers on after they became pregnant? What would students think if they saw pregnant teachers? Wouldn't they know they'd had sexual intercourse? Did employers have to provide the same pensions to men and women even though women as a class outlived men?
Although the EEOC was responsible for deciding these questions, no one really knew how to solve them. There had been no nationwide movement for women's rights, like the civil rights movement, immediately preceding the enactment of the sex discrimination prohibitions, and there was scant legislative history.
As for me, when I cam to the EEOC, I was blithely unaware of the legislative history of the Act. I just read the law and thought it prohibited sex discrimination in employment. For that heretical notion, Charlie Duncan called me a "sex maniac." (pp. 129-132)
I became the staff person who stood for aggressively enforcement of the sex discrimination prohibitions of the Act, and this caused me no end of grief. At the end of one day, after a particularly frustrating discussion with Edelsberg, I left the EEOC building with tears streaming down my face. I didn't know how I had gotten into this position -- fighting for women's rights. No one had elected me to represent women. Why was I engaged in this battle against men who had power where I had none?" pp. 133-134
When we look beyond the US to the rest of the world, the status of women is often shocking. In Third World countries, culture, religion, and law often deprive women of basic human rights and sometimes relegate them to almost subhuman status. Violence against women is a worldwide problem. Female genital mutilation continues, as so child marriages, the selling of young girls into prostitution, and the use of rape and forced impregnation as political weapons.
Nonetheless, the changes we've seen in the past thirty years have been breathtaking." pp. 140-141
In this chapter, Fuentes, a Jew who fled Nazi Germany with her parents, recounts some of her experiences upon returning to Germany in 1978. Fuentes writes
"A friend in the States had recommended a West Berlin restaurant named Xantener Eck. We went there one night for dinner. In Germany, if there is no empty table, the maitre d' seats you at one that is partially occupied. On this night, we were seated with two men in their early forties who, we later learned, were printers.
As we poured over the menus, one of them recommended several entrees to us in halting English. With his English and my German, we were able to converse. When he learned I was Jewish, he immediately said, "I feel no guilt. I was born in 1937." He then embarked upon a tirade against Jews and Israel and referred to the head of the Jewish Center we had just visited as a Fascist. "Why does he have to be a Jew first and a German second?" he asked? "If I were a member of a proud people like the Jews, I would not take money from Germany, as Israel has done, as individual Jews have done, and as the Center continues to do.
"All people are equal: Jews and Christians, whites and Blacks, Israelis, and Arabs. Why does the Jew think he's better than every one else?" I shifted in my seat.
"And look what they've done to the Arabs in Israel," he continued. Two thousand years age, Celts lived on the land where my house stands today. Their descendants now live in France. They don't come back here and say they have a right to my house. What gives Jews the right to do this?"
His companion had paradoxical views. On the one hand, he seemed to share his friend's sentiments, if not his vehemence. But he also asked me whether I'd had any special feelings as a Jew returning to Germany. When I told him I had, he said, "You know, my father was involved during the Nazi regime. I have to live with that.:
We spent several hours at dinner, during which we shared drinks and reminiscences with these men. When we left, we exchanged business cards, and they promised to visit if they whenever came to the States. One of them came close to hugging me when we parted.
I was in a state of utter depression as we walked the foggy streets of West Berlin after this encounter. "Those men really liked me, Roberto [Sonia's husband]," I said. "And yet, it wouldn't take too much for them to come for e again." The discussion in the restaurant brought home to me the fact that what had happened in Germany was still there in some of its people." (pp. 330-332)
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ISBN
Hardcover 0-7388-0634-X
Softcover 0-7388-0635-8
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Eat First can also be ordered from amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and borders.com
Contact the author:
Web site: http://www.erraticimpact.com/fuentes
E-mail: spfuentes@earthlink.net
All excerpts are with permission of the author.
sunshine@pinn.net
Sunshine for Women encourages you to support our feminist sisters by purchasing their books, reading them, disseminating the ideas they contain, but most especially, by making their book available to our sisters, our daughters, and the community at large by requesting your school library, your public library, and area bookstores to carry their books. Remember it is not enough to write literature, history, and theology, we must pass these works on to future generations. Help us to preserve these works for a new generation by putting them on library bookshelves.
last updated Dec 26, 2000
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