PURE FLAME

Orange investigates the legacy of her self-empowered mother as well as expressions of cultural and political feminism.

In this follow-up to This Is Running for Your Life (2013), the author describes her mother as having “lived out a neoclassical epic of self-determination: 1970s housewife turned MBA turned CEO” and their estrangement as a requirement of her mother's emancipation. Approaching 40, Orange feels called to know her mother and, as the daughter of a feminist, to gauge the costs and rewards. Using "inquiry as an act of love,” the author admits that her "own becoming was both guided and thwarted by a determined effort not to become her." Orange braids together memories of her maternal grandmother; stories about and told by her mother; texts between mother and daughter; scenes of their time together; and innumerable quotations from and references to authors, activists, and subjects ranging from Emmeline Pankhurst to Susan Sontag, from whom Orange got her title: "Indeed I did not think of myself as a woman first of all…I wanted to be pure flame." When Orange was a child, in Canada, her mother sought a better-paying job that demanded she move far from her family. Recounting this ambitious decision, Harvard Business Review published "Confronting Sex Role Stereotypes: The Janis/Jack Jerome Cases" in 1989. Her mother’s scenario (as Janis) was presented next to Jack’s, identical other than the subject’s gender. The study’s respondents approved of Jack's choice to move while disapproving of Janis’. This serves as one lens through which mother and daughter examined feminism. About her female relatives, Orange texted, "I didn't really think of any of you as role models.” Her mother replied, "Maybe not consciously." The text messages bring the author’s mother to life, capturing her incisive wit and views, and over the course of the narrative, it becomes clear that Orange and her mother commune best as critics, more cerebral than emotional, neither single-pointed nor conventional.

The prismatic effect of Orange's multidimensional approach is brilliant, illuminative, and moving.