The Maimie Papers: Letters from an Ex-Prostitute (The Helen Rose Scheuer Jewish Women's Series) - Softcover

Pinzer, Maimie

3.79

34 ratings by Goodreads

9781558611436: The Maimie Papers: Letters from an Ex-Prostitute (The Helen Rose Scheuer Jewish Women's Series)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1558611436 ISBN 13: 9781558611436

Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY, 1997

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In 1910, a remarkable correspondence began between a wealthy and distinguished Bostonian philanthropist, Fanny Quincy Howe, and Maimie Pinzer, a Jewish prostitute living in Philadelphia and recovering from a morphine addiction developed after the loss of an eye. The Maimie Papers is Maimie’s side of that correspondence, offering an unprecedented and still unique account of the life of a woman of the streets and her inspiring transformation.

An afterword by Ruth Rosen traces the elusive trail of Mamie’s life following the end of her correspondence, from an elegant apartment in Chicago to a new life in the glamorous Southern California of the late 1920s. The Mamie Papers introduces an unforgettable woman with a powerful writer’s voice, of whom the New York Times Book Review says, Mamie writes like a dream. . . . An astonishing book.”

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Review:

This enchanting collection of brave letters charts a correspondence of more than 12 years between two 19th-century women. Maimie Pinzer was a former prostitute/nude model/actress who wanted to be a lady; Fanny Howe was a Bostonian lady with an understanding of tragedy. The match was unlikely from both sides, but Fanny offered moral support and a definition of what it was to be a "Gentle American," while Maimie contributed her honesty and a clearer view of "the human condition" that Fanny would otherwise not know. The letters intimately detail what life was like for a lower class working woman--and how one woman struggled to make something more of that life.

From the Back Cover:

Until she was thirteen, Maimie Pinzer's life was not very different from that of other Jewish girls growing up in Philadelphia at the beginning of the century. Then, with the brutal murder of her father, growing conflict with her mother, and her subsequent arrest for running away from home, her life was drastically altered. She spent the next few years in prisons, reformatories, and hospitals eventually becoming a prostitute and morphine addict. In 1910, while recovering from drug addiction, Maimie began a correspondence with a distinguished Bostonian, Fanny Quincy Howe. Her struggles to survive had brought Maimie into contact with a variety of people whose miseries and hopes she depicted with a writer's gift. Maimie's gripping letters offer an unprecedented autobiographical account of the life of a poor working woman in the first quarter of this century. With the intervention of a kind social worker and the support of Fanny Howe, Maimie was able to leave prostitution and learn secretarial skills. She worked to become "respectable" and eventually used her small earnings to aid other young women like herself. And - as Ruth Rosen's new afterword reveals - her later life seems to have contained both the security she sought and a touch of glamor.

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