June Book Club: All the Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister

We will gather and introduce ourselves and then spend about 70 minutes talking about the book. We try to bring a feminist perspective to every book discussion. And yes, it's OK if you didn't finish the book.

At the end of our time, we'll hold a vote for the book we'll be reading two months from now. Please bring books that you think might be interesting for the group or that you've been hoping to read!

Folks that have the time are welcome to join for a social beverage at a nearby venue.

We are an inclusive group that welcomes everyone who identifies as feminist or is curious about feminism or at least wants to read feminist books.

For this month, we will be reading All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of the Independent Nation.

Book description: The New York Times bestselling investigation into the sexual, economic, and emotional lives of women is “an informative and thought-provoking book for anyone—not just the single ladies—who want to gain a greater understanding of this pivotal moment in the history of the United States” (The New York Times Book Review).

In 2009, award-winning journalist Rebecca Traister started All the Single Ladies about the twenty-first century phenomenon of the American single woman. It was the year the proportion of American women who were married dropped below fifty percent; and the median age of first marriages, which had remained between twenty and twenty-two years old for nearly a century (1890–1980), had risen dramatically to twenty-seven.

But over the course of her vast research and more than a hundred interviews with academics and social scientists and prominent single women, Traister discovered a startling truth: the phenomenon of the single woman in America is not a new one. And historically, when women were given options beyond early heterosexual marriage, the results were massive social change—temperance, abolition, secondary education, and more. Today, only twenty percent of Americans are married by age twenty-nine, compared to nearly sixty percent in 1960.