⭐⭐⭐
I had a tough time rating Winning the Earthquake: How Jeannette Rankin Defied All Odds to Become the First Woman in Congress. (And not just because very little of it is actually about her becoming the first woman in Congress, though one could argue that everything in her life to that point would be about that.) I had heard of Jeannette Rankin; I'm
into American history so of course had heard of the woman in Congress
who voted against joining both World War I and World War II. And I knew
she was from Montana. But that's about all I knew.
For the first
maybe quarter of this book, I was thinking that this might wind up being
a 5-star review. I was fascinated to learn about Rankin's upbringing in
Montana and her (and her family's) progressive views. She was born in a
cabin in the wilderness; her father was one of the major contributors
to Missoula's growth. I was amazed at the progressiveness of this woman
born in Montana in 1880, and how living there in that time shaped her:
Decisions
were made by conversation and consensus, and everyone's point of view
was given weight. This culture grounded in and dependent upon
participatory democracy profoundly shaped Jeannette's outlook on social
change and the role of government (loc. 101)
and how
it learning of a massacre of Nez Pearce by the U.S. Army in 1877 that
led to Jeannette's lifelong pacifism; she later compared it to My Lai in
Vietnam. As a child, she lobbied her father to give ranch hands better
wages and working conditions. And when the copper kings started taking
over Montana, she railed against the horrors in the Gilded Age, speaking
out against child labor.
She grew up and started working for
women's suffrage, and Jeannette would go to women in towns throughout
the West, arguing that if women had the right to vote, it would help
everyone:
"women voters could blanket California in protections for workers,
women, and children" (loc. 1078) and "Jeannette promised women would
vote to empower unions, regulate corporations, and ensure that worker
protections were codified into law" (loc. 1368). She worked tirelessly
and I loved reading out this fight for women's votes. Women in Montana
got the right to vote, and they promptly voted Jeannette into Congress.
(At the time, Montana actually had two members in the House of
Representatives, and the state wasn't divided into districts.
Jeannette's enemies managed to get the state districted, and that was
how she was voted out.)
Jeannette made it into Congress and the
trouble started, because she was very much against entry into WWI, and
many women's suffrage activists were...not exactly in favor, but didn't
want Jeannette to vote against it because they thought it would hurt
their cause.
As I continued reading the book, I found myself
more and more annoyed with author Lorissa Rinehart, whose opinions shone
through the book (in this case, making comments about the East Coast
women's suffrage leaders). I assume Rinehart is from the western part of
the country; her opinions about Easterners echo the opinions I heard
when I moved from Connecticut to Montana in high school. The book became
frustrating to read at times because the author could be so
strident--and I agreed with her opinions! I'd be like, "I agree, but
dang, tone it down a notch."
Particularly once the book gets into
Jeannette's crusade against war, which is pretty much everything from
her election on. And look, I am not in favor of war, and World War I was
particularly dumb. But passages like the following (about the
Lusitania) kind of just made me sigh:
Jeannette
saw this tragedy not as a cause for war but as a reason to turn off the
spigot of money and munitions that kept the war going. Such a measure
would force Europe's evenly matched old kingdoms to reach an equitable
peace without victory for either side. Many in and outside the
government, including most in the suffrage movement, agreed with her at
the time. Ironically, if the Wilson administration had followed this
advice and ceased to intervene, this pan-European war may well have been
the war to end all wars rather than the one that spawned more than a
century of unprecedented global bloodshed. (loc. 1879)
I
just don't think that's what would've happened if the United States
hadn't entered the war. I mean, maybe? And there are also weird
interjections about how the Constitutional amendment for women's
suffrage was also being sacrificed ("she understood that any hope of an
expanded idea of democracy in America was on the verge of being
forgotten and erased altogether" [loc. 2384] and "the cause of women's
rights ... would be razed in [the war's] path" [loc. 2404]) when she
managed to get the votes farther than expected in Congress in 1917, I
think, and the thing was passed in 1919.
The fallout from her
vote against WWI was interesting, and I loved learning that she helped
form the ACLU, but Rinehart doesn't really go into it much. The book
focuses on her anti-war activities, with occasional sidebars like "To
them [the other suffragists, I believe], despite all her success, she
was persona non grata and would remain so for the rest of her life and
much of history" (loc. 3077) and "Another anniversary of America's
entrance into the war, another turn around the sun since Jeannette
refused to be bent to the will of the powerful and was broken for the
rigidity of her conscience" (loc. 3210). Rinehart also seems to credit
Rankin's peace group for coming up with Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen
Points, which seems...not right.
She does work for organizations
in the anti-war movement, and we get comments like "where leadership
tried to clip her wings with organizational protocol and boardroom
bylaws" (loc. 3593) and I honestly had a hard time telling if Jeannette
was like, "I do things my way, screw you all!" or whether her bosses
were being too micromanage-y. It was frustrating because honestly, by
this point in the book, I didn't totally feel like I could trust
Rinehart's narration and interpretation. Rankin's strategies for getting
support for suffrage in the West in the early 20th century were
obviously effective, but that doesn't necessarily mean they translate
well for other goals.
Jeannette winds up getting elected to
Congress again, where she was famously the only vote against joining
WWII and then was promptly voted out of office. (Rinehart does note that
after voting against the war, Rankin did vote in favor of
appropriations and such to ensure that the soldiers got what they
needed.) And we get glimpses of how Rankin spent her life, but without
much detail
She spent years advocating for women's
right to vote, the ability of labor unions to organize, the end of child
labor, and the expansion of democratic voting rights for all. But most
ardently and most often, she had worked for peace, and it could be said
that all of her other efforts had been in its pursuit. (loc. 4411)
Rankin
spent a lot of time in later years in India, which was interesting
enough, though Rinehart focuses on that without delving into other
issues Rankin worked on. At one point Rinehart mentions Rankin's
participation in the civil rights movement without saying literally
anything about what that involvement looked like. She spoke out against
the Vietnam War, but again, we see very little of what that looked like.
(I
did become more interested in Edna, Jeannette's sister, who worked for
women's reproductive rights, becoming instrumental in extending the
network of Planned Parenthood. That's awesome! More on her!)
Ultimately,
I came to admire Rankin (who also spoke out in favor of getting rid of
the Electoral College! She had many good ideas!), though she seems like
she may have been frustrating to actually deal with--though many people
with big ideas are that way. I enjoyed learning about her but got really
frustrated actually reading this book, and I can't tell how much of
that was because of the author interjecting all over the place. Which
was even more frustrating, because Rankin seems like someone I agree
with.
Do I recommend this book? Oof. I don't know. I do recommend learning more about Jeannette Rankin.
Many thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an advanced copy of the book. All views are mine.
%20daniel%20rader.jpg)
