Desert Years: Undreaming the American Dream

by Cynthia Rich

Book by Sage, Lorna

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

111 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1989

About the author

Cynthia Rich is an activist who has been exposing ageism against old women for more than 25 years. She co-authored the trailblazing essay collection Look Me in the Eye: Old Women, Aging, and Ageism with her partner Barbara Macdonald in 1983; a second, expanded edition was issued in 1991. Another expansion of that edition was published in 2001 after Macdonald’s death at age 86, so that the essays span more than twenty years of analysis and activism, addressing society’s pervasive ageism from a feminist perspective. Rich lives in San Diego, where she is a co-founder of The Old Women’s Project.

(from http://www.oldwomensproject.org/nwsa_...)

Reviews

[Barb Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ive become rather fascinated with Cynthia Rich after reading Adrienne Rich’s biography. I didn’t know Adrienne had a sister and realized that I had already read one of her books about women and aging in grad school. I thoroughly enjoyed reading her “desert diaries” and learning about her time living and aging in the desert with her partner Barbara Macdonald.

“As long as we sentimentalize death, those of us who are younger will probably keep distorting the lives of old women and men, whom we see- not always correctly- as nearer death than we are. It’s not just that we set up the impossible demand that they ring with the confident tones of the last chords of a symphony. In expecting them to be “finished” or near-finished, we I. Fact make them less exciting, more closed to discovery than our own searching selves. Who is so little worth investing in as someone we believe to be no longer open to change?”

[TessaCollinsMilligan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the more beautiful and delicious books that I’ve read in a long time. A treasure.