Unveiling Secrets and Loss: Jill Bialosky’s Intimate Journey Through Grief and Memory
LL: Iris came of age in such a tumultuous time. She was born in 1933, the height of the Great Depression. She lost her mother at a young age, was a Jewish girl assimilating in Cleveland, Ohio, and so much more. She grew up seeing housewives of the 1940s and 1950s and that was her model for adulthood: go to school, meet a nice Mensch, and have babies. Let’s talk more about this idea of being the ‘perfect housewife,’ and how that affected Iris’s life.
JB: My mother grew up in an era where women were expected to be wives and mothers. It is what was instilled in her by her community, family, and friends. When her husband died suddenly at the age of thirty from a heart attack, she was left with three babies to care for and she had no livelihood or higher education except for one quarter of college. Her dream of being a young mother and wife crumbled in that instant and she was only twenty-five years old. Her family encouraged her to eventually try and marry again and her second marriage was a disaster.
