Saturday’s Child

W.W. Norton & Company, 2001

“Wow, can Saturday’s Child write! I had no idea of Morgan’s child star background. My admiration for her was cerebal: I loved her for her mind . . . She’s had an amazing life. Morgan started working as a toddler, first as a model, then at age 4, with her own radio show, then as a child TV star in Mama. She’s never been so public about this part of her life, fearing that the history as a child star would eclipse her far more important contributions to the women’s movement. But now we have it: the fiery feminist Robin Morgan went on a fake date with Sal Mineo and starred at benefits with Milton Berle, Steve Allen, and Rosalind Russell. Pictures in her memoir prove it. She fled from that life and from her mother to become a poet. She has written books of poetry, plus novels and nonfiction, and compiled and edited major anthologies. She has also been possibly the most important bridge between the U.S. feminist movement and the international women’s movement, starting by going to conferences and then traveling to impoverished villages and refugee camps to learn how those women struggle. To her memoir, she brings the heart of a poet, the skills of a historian, the mind of a political theorist, and the storytelling talents of a novelist. What also comes through is a spirit of tremendous generosity.” —JUDY MANN, THE WASHINGTON POST

“A fascinating, readable, amazing book. Robin Morgan has not written your usual female memoir. Morgan has not only believed six impossible things before breakfast, she has enacted them. With great skill, she lures us into sharing her impassioned life.” —CAROLYN HEILBRUN

“This memoir hurtles forward with the fury of a locomotive, dazzling in its scope. Morgan has been a central figure in our time, and her book turns a brilliant flood lamp on the latter half of the 20th century: full of fiery opinions, fine amusing gossip, and—most importantly—a subtle understanding of how the self relates to the larger world.” —JAY PARINI

“The writing, of course, is exquisite. But that isn’t the only point. To harness the pain into a book this good, that’s what’s amazing.” —ALIDA BRILL

“By about a third of the way through the book I was wondering more than once why Morgan is not a heroin addict or a televangelist. I mean, I knew, but I didn’t really know.” —ANNA QUINDLEN

“A canny rehabilitation of an abused genre—a memoir that steers clear of untempered self-regard and maintains a sharp political intelligence.” —THE VILLAGE VOICE

“Through her books and activism, Robin Morgan speaks for and to women everywhere, mightily and movingly. In Saturday’s Child, she not only tells her own story—the story of an astonishing life—but also our story: the behind-the-scenes saga of the Women’s Movement. Such a tale can only be told by someone like Morgan. She was there as one of contemporary feminism’s founders, and she’s a writer who can make us laugh at, weep for, recognize, and celebrate ourselves.” —PATRICIA IRELAND, PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN

Morgan is known as a prize-winning author, a political theorist, and a founder of today’s Women’s Movement. These adult accomplishments eclipsed an earlier fame.

“Saturday’s child has to work for a living,” and Morgan has—since age two. Unlike most child actors, she emerged to reinvent a life filled with literary achievement and constructive politics.

Here Morgan tells the whole story—years as a child so famous she was named “The Ideal American Girl,” her fight to become a serious writer, marriage to a fiery bisexual poet, motherhood, lovers (male and female), decades working on civil rights, the radical underground, and global feminism.

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