Books by Viv Albertine
“Yes, she says, ‘Mum programmed me to fight, not to be walked over, never to give in.’ She says that we lived our mother’s unlived lives. My mother was a civil servant, but as soon as you got married, if you were a civil servant or a teacher, you had to give up work. That was the law. So she gave up work and then she had four children and she was definitely resentful and frustrated and bored. I have three sisters and I think we all felt, and lots of women of my generation say too, that they are aware that their mother was jealous of them. I think what was interesting about Viv’s mother is that it wasn’t so much that she was jealous of her, it was that she kept saying to her, ‘You’ve got to get out there and do it, do what you want, take risks.’ That was really very unusual for a woman in that era because my mother was all, ‘Be very careful’, ‘Be very careful what you wear.’ When my mother discovered I was on the Pill, she actually called me a prostitute. People were terrified that you’d get pregnant, and then in 1969, the year I went to university, was the first year that women, single women, could get the Pill. So I went on the Pill. And she searched all my things when I was out one day and found the Pill, and condemned me for being on it.” Read more...
Dorothy Byrne, Journalist
Interviews where books by Viv Albertine were recommended
Five Memoirs by Women, recommended by Dorothy Byrne
We have much to learn from the lives of women who came before us, says Dorothy Byrne, the British TV journalist and producer who is now president of a women’s college at the University of Cambridge. She recommends five of her favourite memoirs, all by women and notable for their searing truthfulness about everyday life.
