Memoirs of an Ex–Prom Queen: A Novel

Alix Kates Shulman

Apr 2012 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

Now with a new preface: The “furious, fiercely funny, provocative” novel about female rebellion written decades before the #MeToo movement (Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance).
 
Sasha Davis, smart and pretty, was once an all-American teenage beauty queen. Full of potential, she was the only student at her Midwestern high school to attend college on the East Coast.
 
But soon her promise begins to falter. After starting graduate school in New York, Sasha gets married and drops out to take a clerical job. Consigned to the role of trophy wife, and already feeling old at twenty-four, she lives in fear of turning thirty—the year, in her mind, when her beauty will fade and life as she knows it will end.
 
Only after a lot of sexual adventures—as well as a second marriage and motherhood—will she finally begin to figure out what’s gone wrong . . .
 
Poignant and breathtakingly honest, Memoirs of an Ex–Prom Queen remains a feminist landmark—a unique blend of “fun” (Jezebel) and “devastating” (The Boston Globe).
 
“This story, told with astringent wit, explores every facet and cliché of what it means to grow up female and beautiful.” —San Francisco Chronicle
 
“A vivid reminder of just how much―and sometimes, how little―has changed for women . . . Typing prowess and wedding-night virginity may no longer be expected, but Shulman’s tale of Sasha Davis’s struggle to find herself amid conflicting cultural messages about beauty, brains, and sex will be resonant for many more years to come.” ―Andi Zeisler, author of We Were Feminists Once

“An extraordinary novel.” ―Newsweek
 

Ratings and reviews

There were some great parts and some not so great parts. The ending was the worst part.

About the author

Alix Kates Shulman (b. 1932) is the celebrated author of fourteen books, including the bestselling novel Memoirs of an Ex–Prom Queen (1972), which established her as a primary figure in feminism’s second wave. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Shulman studied philosophy at Columbia University and received an MA at New York University. She became a political activist, joining the Congress of Racial Equality in 1961 and the Women’s Liberation Movement in 1967. Her other novels include Burning Questions (1978), On the Stroll (1981), In Every Woman’s Life . . . (1987), and Ménage (2012). She has also written the memoirs Drinking the Rain (1995), A Good Enough Daughter (1999), and To Love What Is (2008);a biography of Emma Goldman entitled To the Barricades (1971); and A Marriage Agreement and Other Essays: Four Decades of Feminist Writing (2012). Shulman lives in Manhattan and continues to speak frequently on issues such as writing, feminism, and reproductive choice.