Review: Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress

Susan Jane Gilman was raised in Upper West Manhattan in the 1970’s, before it became gentrified.   Her family was pretty laid back and “groovy” – her grandmother claimed to be a Communist and her mother signed the whole family up for Transcendental Meditation.   Throughout it all, Susie retained an active imagination and developed a sense of humor.  Her family motto was, “Reality is for people with no imagination.”  Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress:  Tales of Growing Up Groovy and Clueless by Susan Jane Gilman is her memoir.  It starts in her pre-school years and ends when she moved to Geneva shortly after her marriage.

Some of her stories are hilarious – she was tired of her ordinary name, so she convinced her kindergarten teacher that she was changing her name to Sapphire.  Her mother signed the whole family up to learn Transcendental Meditation, and her biggest concern was that she might run into a boy she had a crush on who happened to live  in the same building as the TM Center.  When she wrote an article about gay Rabbis, everyone assumed she was a lesbian and she had to figure out a way to “come out of the closet.”

Parts of the book were touching.  Susan was assigned to go to Poland to write an article on the March of the Living – an event where three thousand Jewish teen-agers met in Poland to learn about the Holocaust.  Her parents broke up when her brother was in college and she felt her family suffered from a “temporary psychosis that plagued every other divorcing family in America.”

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  I laughed out loud quite a few times.  After reading this book, I feel like I could sit and talk to Susan Jane Gilman for hours – she’s so interesting and funny!  She will be featured on Blog Talk Radio tomorrow, April 1, at 1PM Eastern Time.