Burning Questions: A Novel

by Alix Kates Shulman

A large, sweeping historical novel of the rise of the late 20th century women's movement and the modern feminist experience. Burning Questions is told through the voice of Zane IndiAnna, who sees herself as a classic Rebel, who escapes at eighteen from the constrictions of her Midwest suburban home to the New York of the 1950s and the Beats--and whose emotional, intellectual, and political adventures and growth through the next two decades are intertwined with the tumultuous rise of the Women's Liberation Movement. Burning Questions dramatically embodies the radical awakening through feminism of the American woman's consciousness of selfhood and possibility.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Feminism

Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Alix attended public schools and planned to be a lawyer like her dad. But in college at Case Western Reserve University she was smitten by philosophy and upon graduation moved to New York City to study philosophy at Columbia grad school. After some years as an encyclopedia editor, she enrolled at New York University, where she took a degree in mathematics, and later, while raising two children, an MA in Humanities.

She became a civil rights activist in 1961 and a feminist activist in 1967, published her first book in 1970, and taught her first class in 1973--all lifelong pursuits that have found their way into her books.

Having explored in her novels the challenges of youth and midlife, in her memoirs she has probed the later stages in the ongoing drama of her generation of women, taking on the terrors and rewards of solitude, of her parents' final years, and of her late-life calling as caregiver to her beloved husband, with whom she lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Margo Solod · Rating 5 out of 5]

i think this is one of the best "primers" on the women's movemet ever written. should be required reading for every girl by age 18.

[Nuria Gomez Solsona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Revelador, le pondría 10 estrellas. Ha entrado en mi top 3 ♥️

[Monica]

I may have read this before - can't remember now.

[Clifford Wollum · Rating 3 out of 5]

The whole book is dialectic on women liberation.