Mining The Past To Understand The Present

The mid-century, before the baby boomers became teenagers and horrified their parents was, it is said, a time of stifling conformity. Strange. That is not how I remember this time at all. So, I wrote a memoir to set the record straight.

The mid-century, before the baby boomers became teenagers and horrified their parents was, it is said, a time of stifling conformity. Strange. That is not how I remember this time at all. So, I wrote a memoir to set the record straight.

In writing Cold War in a Hot Kitchen: A Memoir of mid-century Melbourne I discovered two things: The 1950s, in Melbourne, Australia, were decidedly not boring, and women paid a price for political choices made by men.

That’s the opening of my article, Mining the Past to Understand the Present, which appeared in the online magazine Women Writers, Women’s Books. (www.booksbywomen.org).

Cold War in a Hot Kitchen is set in suburban Melbourne, but its central puzzle is how my father’s mother came to be so flinty, and so emotionally isolated, while also being a large presence in the house. I uncovered the hard life she’d lived on remote goldfields in the outback of Australia, and the effect her husband’s mining life had on the family. To write this memoir, which became about more universal themes than a simple family story, I read widely about the history of the time and was fortunate to find newspaper articles and a trove of letters by family members to place the reader in this time and place. You can read the article by clicking here.

Barbara Bos, publisher, does so much to celebrate the work of women writers in this wonderful ezine. See my other essays for booksbywomen.org on my website, https://www.margaretannspence.com/essays