The Girl by Meridel le Sueur

Meridel attempted to get The Girl published in 1939, six years after the end of Prohibition in the USA. The Girl is a girl from a Midwestern farm which is falling to bits who gets a job in St Paul, Minnesota serving booze and Booya in a speakeasy. The Booya is legal and sounds yum, it is 'an elegant stew of chicken and veal and beef and every kind of vegetable and you cook it all night and day very, very slow and it gets to smelling even out on the streets and the cats look in the window.' Everything else is under the radar. The book is based on the memories of women Meridel knew. 'Memories is all we have.'

The boozer is called The German Village and is run by Ack and Hoinck and Hoinck's missus Belle. Belle has my favourite line about getting through Sundays 'what do you do if you don't imbibe.'

That's the fun stuff. Life is tough and the St Paul winters are cold and starving. Amelia the union organiser gets everyone to fight for their rights. She rescues the girl from a home for single mums where the social worker has written 'the girl is maladjusted, emotionally unstable and a difficult problem to approach...She should be tested for sterilisation after her baby is born.' Dad is dead he was shot in an attempted bank robbery. The girl was the driver.

The girl ends with her giving birth to baby Clara amongst her female outlaw pals. New life, new hope.

Comments

sounds like mean streets, it's difficult now to imagine being hungry. 

 

Horrible times. Meridel also presents a clear picture of womens' reproductive life before the availability of the pill and legal abortion.