Born in Captivity: The Story of a Girl’s Escape

by Barbara Starke

"In the 1920s, Barbara Starke (a pseudonym) was on a free-ranging runaway trip at 17, wearing corduroys and carrying very little. Despite the clear signal that she was on the road and living rough, she made frequent references to her efforts to stay clean , to wash her clothes or herself in a stream, or in a host s bath, whenever the opportunity arose. As Christine Photinos argues in her article about Barbara Starke and Boxcar Bertha Thompson, Having constructed a space for her own unconventional identity that will not glide into the category of "delinquent woman", Starke nevertheless applies this label to transient women "other" than herself. (Photinos, 664-5) Another important difference that Starke stresses at one point, is that she never lifted her thumb as she walked the roads. As she put it: Although my clothes and pack showed what I was doing, I never sought rides, and did not always want them.".

301 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1931

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very unusual book. It captures a time in the USA somewhat after WW1 and during the era of prohibition in the years prior to 1931 when it was published. There weren't massive interstate freeways across the country and everywhere seemed far less crowded than today. Short synopsis: a young woman (mostly) walks across the country from New York to southern California and back again, and tells us about her adventures, along with observations about life and landscape.

The memoir is written in first-person, of course, and really lovely throughout. Being mostly on foot the author saw the country up close and met a variety of people from many walks of life, some of whom accompanied her for several days. Sometimes (invariably) men offered rides. Sometimes they had intimate encounters. Aside from writing about the people, she writes quite descriptively and evocatively about the mid-west, the desert southwest (Utah), as well as southern California.

There's a really good review of this book on the Neglected Books blog: https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=10009

I actually read (and own a copy of) the British edition, published with the title "Touch and Go". They're reportedly exactly the same book, presumably with some spelling changes. The book is also pretty rare and hard to find. At the time I bought my copy, there were no others for sale that I could find. I had it shipped from England. This is well worth reading and deserves to be much better known. Hopefully someone will pick it up and reprint it; even if they don't the copyright probably expires in a few years so some kind soul might digitize it for posterity.