Rhoda: Her First Ninety Years: A Memoir

By Rhoda Curtis

Rhoda's memoir covers almost nine decades of a life exuberantly lived. A first generation American, born in Chicago in the Year of the Horse, 1918, she lived and worked through several eras: the late... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 141966607X
• ISBN13: 9781419666070
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Booksurge Publishing
• Length: 444 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Rhoda, Her First 90 Years

This is a riveting account of an amazing woman's life-to-date. Her creativity, strength and determination in an unending variety of circumstances makes this a delightful, and at times, heart-wrenching as well as heartwarming story.

Delightful!

This book is an easy, engrossing read. It gives a clear picture of the times and life of the author, good and bad.

Saying "Yes!" to Life

This engrossing memoir of a woman still working part time at age 90, and actively involved with people and politics, is a prime portrait of a fully engaged life. Rhoda Curtis, daughter of Romanian Jewish immigrants, grew up in Chicago where she showed an independent streak at an early age. Since her teen years she has supported herself, first putting herself through college and then working in numerous jobs. Two very different careers reveal her approach to work; whatever she did, Rhoda threw herself into it completely, mastering the basics and then developing innovations. In the fifties and sixties, as owner and designer of Rhoda Pack leathers in San Francisco's North Beach during the Beat Generation and early hippie years, she became part of that world. Rhoda helped start the Grant Avenue Street Fair, still an annual event there. Later in Berkeley she taught English as a Second Language, then branched into training teachers in this field, receiving a masters degree at age 60 and becoming an expert. The chapters describing her later teaching stints in Korea and China are some of book's most compelling. The personal, including her sex life, form an intertwined sub theme. After three marriages that ended in divorce, at age 76 she met Peter, "the love of my life;" they spent eight happy years together which ended only with his death. Rhoda's descriptions of coping with life's crises were so immediate and vivid that I sometimes found myself thinking of how I reacted to similar situations: I suspect that many other readers will do the same. This book is an exceedingly good read. If people's lives interest you, don't miss it.

A FASCINATING MEMOIR

Rhoda Curtis takes us through the changing worlds in which she has lived from the 1920's to the present. Born in Chicago to Jewish immigrants, she now lives in Berkely. She writes with penetrating intelligence, compassion, humor, and a novelist's sense of story. The book is gripping, not only as a personal story but as a historical and cultural narrative.