Thirtysomething: Austinist Reviews The May Queen

We weren't really sure what to expect when we began reading The May Queen: Women On Life, Love, Work, and Pulling It All Together in Your 30s. Would it be essays full of women bragging about how they managed to juggle everything and live happily ever after? Women admitting they are happy that they gave up work to raise their kiddoes? Happily, this collection of essays pulls from such a diverse group of women that there is a little bit of everything. The contributors are published authors of various genres, actresses, musicians, and more. They do tend to be middle-class, heterosexual females, but their stories some from very different experiences.

There are many strong, touching and humorous essays in this collection. Our favorite is “My Missing Biological Clock”, a piece by Meghan Daum about her choice not to get married and have babies. A snippet:

When the prevailing discourse of contemporary womanhood centers around the notion of “balance”, of how to combine one’s career, creative pursuits, exercise program, or sex life with one’s family, the woman for whom balance is not the central issue seems hardly a woman at all.

In “A Hungry Balance”, a couple of essays ahead of Daum’s, Juliana Baggott moans over her struggle to hold on to single friends and associates after choosing to get married young and raise children. The idea that both of these essays are in the same collection is a tribute to the diverse journeys of women in these times.

It seems that most of the pieces in this collection focus on motherhood and how/whether this changes the author’s life. Jennifer Baumgardner’s “Single, Mother” is a sweet story of how the feminist activist happened to get pregnant and come to love her child. This is another of our favorites in the collection.

There are also the “How-I-met-my-husband-when-I-wasn’t-really-looking” essays (Veronica Chambers’ “When He’s Just That Into You” and Tanya Shaffer’s “Of Sweethearts and Sperm Banks” are the stand-outs in this bunch), the essays on coping with aging (see Heather Juergensen’s “Bedsores and Cocktails”, Sara Woster’s “Considering the Alternatives” and Carla Kihlstedt’s “The Late Bloomer”), as well as biographical essays that really defy any sort of genre, such as Flor Morales’ tale of leaving El Salvador in “Crossing the Border”, Ivy Meeropol’s touching “How I See It” about her father’s parents (the Rosenbergs) and her realization that she is the age they were when they were put to death, and “Side of the Road” by Austin’s Dao Strom.

There are a couple of essays in The May Queen that we tended to skim, but most of the pieces are engaging and ring with truth. While the essays are far from consistent in style and structure, they all seem to come together well. We would read this book again; as we approach 30 (it just keeps getting closer!), we see many issues in common with these women.

The May Queen: Women On Life, Love, Work, and Pulling It All Together in Your 30s
edited by Andrea N. Richesin
(Penguin Books, $14.95)

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