This week’s staff pick, Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon– and the Journey of a Generation by Sheila Weller, focuses on three of music’s best singer-songwriters. Read how each woman was shaped by and contributed to the emerging feminist movement. “Both scholarly and dishy. A superb journalist, Weller has managed to uncover a trove of unreported facts on her subjects.” — People
“Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon remain among the most enduring and important women in popular music. Each woman is distinct. Carole King is the product of outer-borough, middle-class New York City; Joni Mitchell is a granddaughter of Canadian farmers; and Carly Simon is a child of the Manhattan intellectual upper crust. They collectively represent, in their lives and their songs, a great swath of American girls who came of age in the late 1960s. Their stories trace the arc of the now mythic sixties generation—female version—but in a bracingly specific and deeply recalled way, far from cliché. The history of the women of that generation has never been written—until now, through their resonant lives and emblematic songs.
Filled with the voices of many dozens of these women’s intimates, who are speaking in these pages for the first time, this alternating biography reads like a novel—except it’s all true, and the heroines are famous and beloved. Sheila Weller captures the character of each woman and gives a balanced portrayal enriched by a wealth of new information.” —Amazon
Are you a folk music fan? Then you won’t want to miss our upcoming program Songbirds: Women in Folk Music, Wednesday, March 23rd from 7:00-8:30 pm in the Community Room. Registration is requested.
