A Woman of Uncertain Character: The Amorous and Radical Adventures of My Mother Jennie (Who Always Wanted to Be a Respectable Jewish Mom) by H - Hardcover

Sigal, Clancy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786717483 ISBN 13: 9780786717484

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2006

Synopsis

This memoir is about Clancy Sigal's intense attachment to his fast-talking, redhaired, sexy, unwed mother Jennie, a firebrand union organizer, and his roaring Oedipal rivalry with his mostly absent father Leo who carries a gun to social occasions. In the wide-open, violent Chicago of the Depression and war years, Jennie, in her Cuban heels and flaming lipstick, is a single mother on welfare trying to raise a wild rebellious son in a twilight world between law and lawlessness. She is defiant, vulnerable, sexually alive, high stepping, man-loving, woman-friendly, wisecracking — fearlessly facing down hostile scabs armed with shotguns and clubs. Along with the portrait of Jennie, this book tells a rollicking, profane, and gritty tale of bottom-feeding street life, race riots, riding the rails, and what happens when a gang boy is mistakenly sent to an all-girls' high school.

About this title

About the Author

Clancy Sigal has published four novels, most recently THE SECRET DEFECTOR. He was a Natinoal Book Award runnerup, and was principal screenwriter for the 2002 film FRIDA. He is a reporter and ex-BBC correspondent who has covered everything from the Prohibition-era Lindbergh baby kidnapping through the Vietnam War to 9/11. A Hollywood blacklistee, he was involved in the Sixties civil rights movement in Georgia; worked closely in London with the charismatic "anti psychiatrist" Dr. R. D. Laing; and knew Jimmy Hoffa. He is a professor emeritus at University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communication. He lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

Starred Review. Screenwriter Sigal (Frida), a Renaissance man blacklisted in Hollywood and active in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, draws from his tempestuous childhood in the 1930s in gangland/union-busting Chicago. This vivid, poignant and political memoir depicts his complicated, beloved mother, a "crazy bohemian" Russian Jewish émigré immersed in the politics and mores of her time (she is now deceased). Jobless but never manless, Jennie Persily, youngest of 10, settled on Manhattan's Lower East Side, attended lectures given by John Reed and Emma Goldman, and fashioned her politics after theirs. An organizer for unions, she called her first strike at 13. An unwed mother at 31, she brought Clancy with her as she traveled the country by train, organizing. Along the way there were many men (and some women), and close calls with police and gangland hoods over her union activities. Clancy's childhood was peppered with characters like Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky and the "abusive Swede," his favorite of his mother's lovers. Gritty prose worthy of any classic noir film propels this engaging, often tender memoir of a larger-than-life woman and her self-deprecating but accomplished son, who still misses their shared adventures. (May)
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*Starred Review* Voluptuous redhead Jennie Persily was a stylish Russian-Jewish American labor organizer (and single mother) who could outsmart and stare down the toughest Chicago cops and southern sheriffs. Sigal, who tags himself as a "Flapper Age hootchy-kootchy speakeasy baby," and who became a Hollywood screenwriter blacklisted in the McCarthy era, accompanied his brave, zealous mother all across the South during the 1930s as she took on the dangerous work of organizing black women workers, then held his own in Chicago's tough Jewish neighborhood known with all due hilarity as the Great Vest Side. A buddy of Studs Terkel, Sigal has a truly revelatory story to tell, and he writes with pizzazz and sensitivity, sounding like a blend of Mark Twain (he always wanted to be Huck Finn), Saul Bellow, and Stuart Dybek as he remembers the harsh demands of the Depression, his radical mother's resourcefulness and strength, and the escapades of his fellow "street yids," all the while offering a rare inside view of the revolutionary American labor movement. His rough-and-tumble coming-of-age stories are rife with pain, humor, and a gritty beauty, while Jennie emerges as a force of nature: bountiful, righteous, volatile, and indomitable. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786717483
• ISBN 13: 9780786717484
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288