Kindle Price: $31.69

Save $13.26 (29%)

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

eBook features:
  • Highlight, take notes, and search in the book
  • In this edition, page numbers are just like the physical edition
Read with our free app
Rent
$24.73

Today through selected date:

Rental price is determined by end date.

Sold by Amazon.com Services LLC.
eBook features:
  • Highlight, take notes, and search in the book
  • In this edition, page numbers are just like the physical edition
You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

Buy for others

Give as a gift or purchase for a team or group.
Learn more

Buying and sending eBooks to others

  1. Select quantity
  2. Buy and send eBooks
  3. Recipients can read on any device

These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the US. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Amazon book clubs early access
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Explore Amazon Book Clubs

Follow the author

Rickie Solinger
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade 2nd Edition, Kindle Edition

by Rickie Solinger (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 27 ratings
See all formats and editions
Rickie Solinger's passionate and powerful history serves to remind us of the importance of the feminist efforts that led to Roe v. Wade and the many other measures that have liberated women from the constraints of the past. -From the new foreword by Elaine Tyler May Twenty-five years after the Supreme Court's landmark decision, abortion rights are as fiercely contested as ever and current debates over welfare, workfare, and public assistance to women with children demonstrate the way in which race and class continue to effect women's reproductive freedom. A pioneering work, Wake Up Little Susie reveals how current attitudes toward these issues developed by examining their roots in the postwar era and discerning how differently they affected black and white women. A powerful and shocking book, Susie is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the complex and disturbing politics surrounding issues of race, class and reproductive rights. This new edition includes a foreword by the esteemed social historian, Elaine Tyler May, and an afterword by the author that places the issues examined in Susie in the context of the current controversies.
Previous page
  1. ISBN-13
    978-0415926768
  2. Edition
    2nd
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Routledge
  5. Publication date
    October 15, 2013
  6. Language
    English
  7. File size
    2011 KB
  8. See all details
Next page
Add a debit or credit card to save time when you check out
Convenient and secure with 2 clicks. Add your card

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A stunning but troubling book that illuminates the deeply racialized terrain on which the politics of women's reproductive capacities and decisions have been played out. Contributing mightily to contemporary social policy debates, this rich history of single pregnancy from 1945 to 1965 warns us that reproductive rights must not only guard each woman's choice to contracept or to terminate a pregnancy, but also must win honor and social support for each woman's choice to become a mother." -- Gwendolyn Mink, author of Welfare's End
"It is impossible to read Wake Up Little Susie without understanding that racism as well as a deeply felt distrust of women as mothers--magnified when the women are not formally subordinated to husbands--makes such odd national passions possible." -- Bernice L. Hausman, Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, vol 4.1 --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

In a thorough and important, if often tiresomely repetitive, study, Solinger (Women's Studies/Univ. of Colorado, Boulder) dissects the politics of female fertility in America from 1945-65, when the strikingly different treatments of middle-class white and poor black pregnant teenagers clearly reflected the demands of a racist, family-centered economy. Before WW II, Solinger reports, unwed mothers in the US were considered the products of defective, amoral environments-- permanent outcasts for whom no kind of rehabilitation was possible. After the war, she argues, a perceived societal need to produce as many white children in ``healthy'' male-headed families as possible, combined with new Freudian psychological theories and racist sociological assumptions concerning black sexuality, engendered a dualistic treatment of unwed pregnant women depending on the color of their skin. Whereas the ``market value'' of white babies enabled and even encouraged white single mothers to ``sacrifice'' their offspring for adoption in exchange for a second chance at respectability (usually after exile in a maternity home), ``unmarketable'' illegitimate black babies were considered the inevitable product of the ``natural'' black libido and were therefore left to be raised by their mothers, who were in turn treated as incorrigible breeders who gave birth to win more government benefits. With the ``sexual revolution'' (for whites) and ``population bomb'' (for blacks) of the late 60's and early 70's came the technological fixes of birth control and legalized abortion--though these steps toward female self-determination for women of all races were more a result, Solinger claims, of a slump in the white baby market and fear of black overpopulation than of societal concern for the fate of single mothers. Revelatory but regrettably dry work with repercussions for today. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BL5SPGRV
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Routledge; 2nd edition (October 15, 2013)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 15, 2013
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2011 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Up to 4 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 360 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0415926769
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 27 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Rickie Solinger

Rickie Solinger

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
27 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Jan
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, well-researched book.
Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2023
Verified Purchase
Book arrived in great condition. I am using it for research, so I was really impressed with the bibliography. Well done.
Helpful
 Report
The City Dweller
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!
Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2022
Verified Purchase
This is a key read especially now. Solinger dispatches with the BS about abortion & women of color—- all hues— controlled by third parties. Women’s bodies, always the province of individual men & the State— regardless of accidents of birth. This is a key read, especially with Alito’s opinion overturning Roe, and the false consciousness of many “woke” folks who truly have no understanding of oppression based on sex. Yes. Sex—that biological fact which has placed women—as a class in the oppressed category. Read this. You’ll understand why thus book speaks to now. History has its eyes on us. On you! Read.
Helpful
 Report
Koko
5.0 out of 5 stars An Abomination Against Motherhood
Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2015
Verified Purchase
A classic and right on the facts! Newborn infants were simply abducted on the delivery table and trafficked to infertile-but-married women. The biggest crime against the innocent Mother&Child Dyad ever to have happened across the Western World. And still no justice for the victims who were targeted while pregnant, rounded up, held inside institutions without benefit of charge or sentencing much less legal representation. This was a Holocaust, an extermination of young Motherhood, a crime against humanity and it seems no one give a damn.
11 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Joneski
5.0 out of 5 stars Include this title in your adoption reading list
Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2019
Verified Purchase
Very difficult and important read. Well written. include this work in your compendium Pre-Roe v. Wade syllabus. An often overlooked title, this book explores the difference race played in the how mothers experienced surrendering their child.
2 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Amanda
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Read to Learn About Adoption History
Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2011
Verified Purchase
This book is an excellent resource to understand not only Women's Rights but also to understand the rights of individuals impacted by adoption and how adoption and other policies and practices have been used to punish women for bearing children outside of wedlock. Countless women lost children to adoption and society today still seems none-the-wiser as to how these women were treated.

The stereotypes of adoption would quickly fade away if everyone would take a moment and read books like these that are so well researched and cited.
9 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2016
Verified Purchase
very good and detailed book
2 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Eileen English
3.0 out of 5 stars Before Roe v Wade
Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2013
Verified Purchase
I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested single pregnancy of birth mothers before and during that time period.
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Elizabeth Davies
5.0 out of 5 stars The existence of an adoption mill is something I'd never guessed--until now.
Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2015
Reading this book made me reflect deeply on adoption practices past and present. Although a detailed discussion of abortion is not really attempted, I found myself thinking about the Pro-Life movement in a new and very suspicious way. So often, people trying to end abortion rights in the US speak eloquently about adoption. Is it possible, I now wonder, that their efforts are fueled by a determination to keep a fresh supply of babies to be taken from their mothers and awarded to infertile couples? This book has made me realize that a truly Pro-Life perspective would require greatly expanding social services and well-paying jobs, and de-stigmatizing unmarried mothers, in order to tremendously reduce the number of girls and women who feel caught in the current adoption-vs.-abortion dichotomy.
8 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Report an issue

Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Report
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Report
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?
Report