The Activist's Daughter

by Ellyn Bache

Embarrassed by her mother's all-too-public civil rights activities in the fall of 1963, 17-year-old Beryl Rosinsky flees her home in Washington, DC, and begins college at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Here, in the segregated South, she means to reject her destiny as her mother's daughter by conforming and fitting in. But she finds herself in a world of uncomfortable paradoxes. Strict rules for women don't apply to men. Southern good manners don't extend to the black girl who lives alone on the other side of the dorm. Soon Beryl begins to appreciate her family's values -- and learn who she really is.

Genres: Fiction

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Ellyn Bache is the author of nine novels, including Safe Passage, which was made into a movie starring Susan Sarandon, and The Art of Saying Goodbye, which was chosen as an “Okra Pick” by the Southeastern Independent Booksellers Alliance. She began her career writing short stories for women’s magazines like McCall’s and Good Housekeeping, some of which have recently been collected in Kaleidoscope: 20 Stories Celebrating Women’s Magazine Fiction. She has also published dozens of literary stories, including those which appeared in a collection that won the Willa Cather Fiction Prize. After many years living in Wilmington, NC, she moved to Greenville, SC, a lovely city but much too far from the ocean. Visit her at www.ellynbache.com

Reviews

[Marjorie Hudson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this story of a woman treading the halls of UNC Chapel Hill, escaping her family's embarrassing activist background in DC. Bache explores this tumultuous era in the South, opening the young woman's eyes to the subtleties of racism and how she might need to step up herself to make a difference. I moved to the Chapel Hill area from DC much later than this character, but there was and is still work to do. I really love how Bache addresses social issues in her work, skillfully taking us to understanding of things we perhaps would rather not think about, but never being didactic or preachy. Just keeping it real.

[Rosaland Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book. While I read, I time traveled back to 1963 and felt myself on the front lines. Beryl, the main character of the book, is culture shock by civil rights and the Southern Social norms in Chapel Hill. Please read it!

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books!

[Kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ellyn Bache serves up an interesting tale of relationships and identity in The Activist's Daughter. Living in bustling, Kennedy-era Washington, D.C., the Rosinsky family would appear to blend in well with their surroundings, if not for father Leonard's despondance over his reputation and career being destroyed after the McCarthy trials and mother Leah's determination to single-handedly help every worthy civil rights cause in the nation. Embarassed and angered by her mother's attention toward other people (and lack thereof toward her own family), seventeen-year-old Beryl wishes to break altogether from the activist's shadow. The best answer appears to be enrolling in an out-of-state college--North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a different country altogether in 1963.

Once settled in with two pretty, Protestant roommates (Jewish-born Beryl tends to lean towards atheism), Beryl finds that despite her mother's absence she has trouble escaping the climate of activism. The addition of a black co-ed to her dormitory, for one, draws her back into civil rights issues as her friends and peers band together to fight segregation in the college town. When Beryl seeks solace in an awkward relationship with a moody, polio-stricken ex-student whom she thinks has no interest in such matters, she soon discovers different. Any attempts Beryl has at establishing her own identity at Chapel Hill quickly fail as we see her slowly become more and more like her mother--sympathetic for the underdog and unafraid to let her anger show, as we see when Beryl puts herself in the same situations as her mother. These make for the strongest moments in the story, when Beryl's maturity shines through her obvious, though at times reluctant, concern for others.

The Activist's Daughter is straightforward storytelling; though I would have liked to have seen more interaction between Beryl and her mother (who disappears mid-story and seems to pop up when convenient), Bache compensates for this strong conflict by keeping Leah in spirit, as seen in Beryl as we watch her grow.

[HeavyReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

The following is a review that I wrote for the September/October 1998 MSRRT Newsletter :

Aimed at young adults, this historical romance set in 1963 tackles issues ranging from racism to unplanned pregnancy, sex to religion, sexism to physical disability. Happily, the presentation of so many controversial topics within less than 300 pages seems neither heavy handed nor contrived. Further, the characters are multidimensional and believable. The protagonist is a young woman who tries to agitate her civil rights activist mother by escaping her hometown of Washington, DC to attend college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel HIll. Fortunately, the mother is not portrayed as a saint, but as an imperfect parent with problems of her own. It is also satisfying that the daughter does not quickly and miraculously transform from a brat embarrassed by her mother and all forms of activism into a butt-kicking radical. Instead, she goes through quite credible changes which occur slowly during her first semester of college. Even though the plot is fairly predictable, the ending is not sugar sweet and "happily ever after." The characters grow and change, but they still have difficulties when the book ends. Keep this novel in mind for teenagers who like historical fiction. This romance is about more than just finding Mr. Right.

[Melinda · Rating 2 out of 5]

The plot had real possibilities but as written became trite.