Ivy Days: Making My Way Out East

by Susan Allen Toth

Offers a memoir of the author's years at Smith College, detailing the hardships of academic life and the problems of adapting to the social, intellectual, and dress codes of the prestigious women's college

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, College, Book Club, Biography Memoir

240 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 1984

About the author

Dr. Toth graduated from Smith College and Berkeley and received a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1969. She taught English at San Francisco State College and now teaches at Macalester College in Minnesota. Toth has contributed articles and stories to a wide range of magazines and newspapers. She has written two memoirs—Blooming: A Small Town Girlhood (1981) and Ivy Days: Making My Way Out East (1984). She has also written a series of books on England, including My Love Affair with England (1992), England as You Like It (1995), England for All Seasons (1997), and Victoria, the Heart of England: A Journey of Discovery (1999).

Reviews

[Cleo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won't lie, I picked up this book for an easy read, as I'd just come off a run of reading some pretty heavy stuff. I was expecting some sort of jolly-hockey-sticks/50's glam/liberal arts mishmash, but I was pleasantly surprised to have these expectations largely subverted. Substantial discussions of social class, the peculiarities of sisterhood (especially among those with something to prove, like Allen Toth and her fellow scholarship recipients), and the spectrum of homesickness (which hit me particularly hard) are where this memoir really shines.

I wouldn't really recommend this book to anyone, but I'm grateful for its appearance in my life at a time when I really needed it. Thank you Sue Allen.

Also, a moment of silence for the physical copy I used, which came to me with:

* impressively yellowed pages
* the front cover rendered indecipherable due to water damage
* a cracked spine

and on account of being my backpack paperback has accrued:

* dog-earred pages
* missing front cover corner
* nicks in the flimsier pages
* further water damage on account of being squashed in next to a leaky pack of makeup wipes

May this copy rest in peace, because I have no idea who'd buy a book that has taken such a beating from life, and I'm sure as hell not lugging it back to England.

[Carmen Liffengren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I attended college decades after Toth and yet, I found her memoir of her undergraduate years at Smith College emotionally resonant. She excavates her years at Smith with detached scrutiny. Without ever over-romanticizing her elite women's college, Toth paints an honest, but bittersweet portrait of her experiences, leaving space for the minutiae and ennui that come with the pressure of high academic expectation. It's a perceptive and gorgeous memoir.

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because I attend the same college that the author writes about, and for that alone I had reason to be highly interested in it. Although I love reading about life in decades past, I almost always read about in the form of non-fiction or literature, and I hardly ever read memoirs. Nonetheless, I found this book to be highly interesting. I loved seeing how (female) college students lived in the fifties, an era that seems so alien when compared to my college experience, and I enjoyed even more seeing the buildings and traditions of my familiar college campus transformed to something so different yet so immediately recognizable. Her relationships with other students was somewhat familiar (albeit without the 90% queerness or outspoken feminism of the Smith College that I know and love) and it gave me a thrill to see familiar names and buildings mentioned. However, the world she describes is also so different from my everyday experience - a two day train ride home? That's nothing compared to my hours-long cross-country journey today. It was fantastic to recognize that so many of the same anxieties that plague my friends and I today existed back then, too, such as the anxieties surrounding dating (although the issues youth face today seem distant from the basic struggles to express your desires or even make a phone call). Reading this book made me long for my campus, and I think it was a fantastic way to make me reflect on what I'm doing in my study abroad experience and how I want to re-approach my final year on campus.

[Wawe Mapenzi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this book at a thrift shop in Mombasa at the beginning of the year but had to leave it behind because I simply had no more space in my bags.

The writer tells the story of what it means to have been a Smithie, that is, a girl/woman who attended Smith College. I mostly bought this book because of Sylvia Plath, who was my obsession when I was twenty & twenty-one and who also attended Smith College. (The other reason is that I very much wanted to go to Vassar when I was in high school and Smith College reminds me of Vassar and other liberal arts colleges in the US.)

What was particularly interesting for me is that the writer's college experiences were reminiscent of my high school years: the discipline, the bells, the boys, the competition. Also, the women at Smith College - or perhaps it's just the writer - seemed to be too sheltered and cushioned from the rest of the world, especially politically. I did not feel that the writer had a sense of what was happening in the world around her. Which I thought to be a little strange because for many people, college/university is the place where one usually expands one's sense of the world.

All in all an interesting read, though I did put it down every now and then.

[Cynthia Paschen]

page 37:"Soon we were passing through towns whose baseball teams I had booed, whose cheerleaders I might recognize, whose Presbyterian youth fellowships had attended our synod conferences. I even welcomed the swinging signposts at the tiny stations we whipped past, because they bore names I recognized: Mechanichsville, Belle Plaine, Tama, State Center. As our train meandered through the center of larger towns, I saw people on the streets who looked like people in Ames, doing their shopping, driving their cars, or standing at corners. Most of them didn't notice us, and I was aware how removed they were from the excitement I felt. Of course, they couldn't know I was going home. I was glad to see the store signs, Sears, Super Valu, Our Own Hardware; I liked the new developments with their tract ramblers dotting the edges of town; I wanted to wave at an old brick school that looked just like Louise Crawford Elementary, back in Ames."

This simple paragraph is an example after the heart of both me and my favorite teacher of all time, John Forssman. He taught us to use concrete language, and a Nickle word rather than a dollar word. Concrete, specific language, indeed.

My kids spent their elementary years at Crawford Elementary. It has long closed, and been turned into apartments for seniors. The beat goes on.

[Agrip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very random read but was curious what it was like going to Smith in the late 50s? Early 60s?

Surprise! It was horrible. The horrifying opening taught me that eugenicists used to get every freshmen at every elite college photographed NAKED.

WHAT THE EVER LOVING YOU KNOW WHAT?

Anyway, she worked hard and played rarely. The whole "scholarship dorm" setup was another rough ride.

But I enjoyed seeing the ways life has changed (her travel home was grueling), and the ways it hasn't, as the first year of college and beyond are always an education.

[Readings n' Musings · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very sweet and charming memoir.
I saw a review that called it : "a modest memoir that quite vividly describes the process of creating a place for oneself in the world."
Definitely would love to read it again before I graduate.

[Jan J · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Susan Allen Toth.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this really uneven - some of it fascinating and some not. I like reading about the college experience in ye olde days, but some of this just did not grab me.

[Ann Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Toth is a writer of quality---however, I much prefer her book about England to this one about her life at Smith College in the north east.

[Linda Spear · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this very slowly in order to savor the sense of place and the time period.

[Daniela Sorgente · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book really cute and enjoyable to read. It is an autobiographical story, the author remembers her years at Smith College, a prestigious women's college in New England, between the end of the 50s and the beginning of the 60s: the friendships, the studies, the difficulties, the sentimental education. We thus have an interesting portrait of the life and position of women before the 60s, before the protests, Kennedy, Martin Luther King, the war in Vietnam. Women, even educated ones, had little opportunity to work, other than to become teachers; getting married meant abandoning studies or work and taking care of an husband. With flashforwards we also see what will become of the author's subsequent life and of many of the people she met.

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found it interesting because I am from the midwest and I went to Smith College, like the author. She also lived in the same dorm as me. However, the narrative isn't that unique or exciting. It is simply a coming of age type of story. It was interesting to learn about my schools old class requirements and strange traditions, like having to pass in "posture." Any Smithy would enjoy it, but I don't know if anyone else would. Anyway, fun and easy.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some chapters were great, some not so. Maybe it's just my interests but I found the one about dating a bit long. On the other hand, the chapter on Summa could have been written by my daughter, a recent Smith graduate, though the process of selection has changed since the '60's. The other fascinating thing for me was it was a kind of reverse culture shock for me- I was an eastern liberal girl who went to college in rural Iowa for 2 years. It was fun to read the revers perspective.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I put this book down, with thirty pages to go, partially because I became busy with coursework at Smith, and didn't pick it up again until today. It's enjoyable to compare my and her Smith experiences, and soothing to hear that she too felt the anxiety about what to do after graduation, especially as I'm about to enter my senior year. The Summa chapter was memorable.

[Misti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good so far. Really strong memoir of what it's like to be attending Smith and also a wonderful incidental history of Lawrence house. Personal Peeve: misspelling of "Northrop House" but then, that's MY house, so I think that's reasonable.

[Pbwritr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in 1957,k a young girl from Iowa attends Smith College. All about adjusting to the academics, social life, and finding a boyfriend or dates. Really very entrancing and puts one right into the time period.

[Lois Wood · Rating 1 out of 5]

So so -- I went to Smith -- it was fun to read some of the familiar things, but not at all sure it's a "typical" experience of a Smith student ... I honestly didn't like it much.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

some of the author's experience from the late 50s/early 60s was similar to my own Smith experience.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

True account of a midwestern girl at Smith College in the late 1950's.