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4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Saying "Yes!" to Life Jun 24, 2007
By Celeste Lipow Macleod
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.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
A FASCINATING MEMOIR Jun 16, 2007
By M. espinosa
"interested reader"
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.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
A Rare Model for Growing into our Elderhood Feb 24, 2010
By Sharon Johns
When Rhoda was 67 and most of us were retired by that age, she embarked on a trip to Korea, spent two years there as an educational administrator, and continued to engage herself in work in California and abroad for many years afterward and up to the present moment. She had a lengthy and deep relationship during 8 of those years. I am 67, and besides my own mother, I cannot remember encountering either in person or in a book, the role model of an American woman whose energy and commitment to life reached far into those rarefied elder years. When I think of my own life into the future, I now have that model in Rhoda, and see that many things are possible. Do our 70s and 80s give us a second wave of the romantic? Is some form of work still possible and possibly satisfying? Or other adventures? Thank you, Rhoda, for remembering your life not just for yourself, but for many of us out here who need a fresh role model for our elderhood, a new take on our dreams, and the courage to look forward.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Great autobiography Apr 09, 2009
By Lesley Woodward
"Bye-bye bush"
Rhoda, The First Ninety Years is a wonderful read. Rhoda is a former teaher and mentor of mine and I was so pleased to find her book available on Amazon. An amazing woman.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Rhoda, Her First 90 Years Sep 05, 2008
By Diane P. Fletcher
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.
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