The Territory of Men
A Memoir
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Born into the turmoil of mid-sixties San Francisco, the daughter of a flower child and a surfer, Joelle Fraser grew up with no bedtime, no boundaries, and no father. But “dads” she had in abundance, as her mother worked her way through boyfriends and husbands, caught between the traditional rules of her upbringing and the new freedoms of the “me generation” and women’s lib. Moving every few months, from houseboats and beach shacks to run-down apartments, Joelle came to learn that a woman’s life, free or not, is played out on men’s territory.
Set in northern California, Hawaii, and the small coastal towns of Oregon, Fraser’s engrossing memoir captures this centerless childhood in wonderfully vivid, frank writing, then goes on to show how a legacy like this affects a girl as she grows up. Pretty, blond, precociously aware of her own sexuality, Joelle was drawn to men early, eager to unlock their mysteries. Working in bars, prisons, and firing ranges, she liked to hang out where they congregated. To her the only worlds that counted were men’s worlds. Men held the power; they made life matter.
Fraser’s sharp vignettes of her intense relationships, brief, turbulent marriage, and itinerant life are haunting echoes of her early memories. In The Territory of Men, she brilliantly portrays the way a rootless childhood leads to a restless adulthood, and how a mother’s aimless life serves as a blueprint for her daughter.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As a child growing up in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest in the late 1960s and '70s, the author watched her mother move between relationships, leaving men before they could leave her, a pattern she acknowledges she later emulated. In her debut book, Fraser, a University of Iowa MFA graduate, looks at her personal history through a periscope, examining her life in terms of her relationships with men, starting and ending with her often absent, alcoholic father. At times moving, occasionally self-indulgent and ultimately uneven, Fraser's narrative covers some 30 years in chronological, vignette-like chapters. She writes poetically about her earliest years, successfully evoking a child's sense of wonder and curiosity about her world. The typical rites of passage she describes later envying other girls' clothing, trying to attract a boyfriend are less interesting and the language more clich d ("I thought of Hawaii, picturing the envy on my classmates' and teachers' faces when I told them the news. I'd leave the wet gloom of Portland, take off on a shiny white plane, and learn to surf and hula dance..."). Not surprisingly, Fraser's substitute fathers her mother's male companions, her own romantic and sexual partners, fellow grad students, men she teaches in prison don't fill the void left by her father. Toward the end, she turns more reflective and offers some fine passages about reconciling her idealized notion of her father (gentle) with the real man ("elusive" and self-destructive). Despite its virtues, Fraser's memoir won't garner favorable comparison to works by writers who have traversed similar territory.
