Review by Martha Quillen
Western Women’s Writing – November 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine
Leaning Into the Wind – Women Write From The Heart Of The West
edited by Linda Hasselstrom, Gaydell Collier & Nancy Curtis
published in 1997 by Houghton Mifflin Company
ISBN 0-395-83738-3
Leaning Into the Wind is a collection of essays, reminiscences, poems, and personal narratives by western women who live in Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana, on plains, in mountains, and amid badlands.
The book includes personal accounts about raising sheep, cattle, goats, pigs, turkeys, chickens, wheat, fruits, vegetables, and children. And the authors include both old and young women sharing their accounts of family life in the teens, twenties, thirties, forties, and beyond, in writings about yesterday and today, about childhood, birth, and death, about historic floods, blizzards, blights, and grasshopper invasions.
All in all, a lot of these women seem to have nothing whatsoever in common. But that’s what makes Leaning a masterful collection.
In the preface, Linda Hasselstrom says she and her colleagues wanted to create a book that would relate the real lives of “ranch women thriving on hardscrabble places.” Thus Leaning was designed to counterbalance a literary tradition of “pure hogwash from cheap Western novels,” and the typical non-fiction stories about “some honky-tonk cowboy or cowgirl yahooed by an Eastern magazine as the genuine article.”
But in the final draft, the editors of Leaning also included narratives by schoolteachers, townspeople, and animal-rights activists, plus people who have left the city to try country living, and people who have left farms to try their luck in cities. The result is a rich tapestry of rural living.
The women illuminated in Leaning Into the Wind are individuals, not stereotypical westerners — and their stories are their own. These women don’t all share the same perspectives or viewpoints. Some are single, some married, some divorced, some widowed. Some are farmers, some are ranchers; some raise sheep and some raise cattle. Some of the poetry is inspired by nature, some by everyday work, and some by the humorous antics of neighbors.
If all of these authors got together many would undoubtedly disagree about politics, religion, and what to do with unwanted kittens. But whatever their subject, their contributions are heartfelt and vivid.
The editors did a great job of picking blizzard stories that can chill you, and family tales that can warm your heart. All and all, Leaning Into the Wind is an extraordinary collection. The only parts I didn’t like were a few passages in the preface where Hasselstrom tried to characterize the contributors.
After reading the book, it’s hard to make any hard and fast conclusions about country women, and Hasselstrom’s certainly didn’t hold very true. For example, in one paragraph she wrote, “Most Western women are too busy to join clubs or write letters to the editor. They work hard, but they also enjoy themselves too much to waste energy arguing about politics or analyzing their philosophies on paper.”
Since many of the authors included in this volume have published books to their credit or are known “cowboy” poets, that statement seemed preposterous.
In actuality, rural women may well be more inclined than suburbanites to philosophize on paper, and this book more or less proves it.
In the preface, Hasselstrom sometimes forgot her aim was to eliminate, not disseminate stereotypes. “Sweat-stained, these women wear plains mud on their shoes and under their fingernails,” she writes. “Knowledge of freedom lies bone-deep in these women, whether it means loping over the countryside on horseback or climbing onto a Quonset roof.” Elsewhere she asks, “How could we show the world the real women we know, living monuments like those who taught us how to stand on our own feet: Western women who stare down the future, eyes squinting against the glare?”
At one point in the preface, Hasselstrom quotes from a selection by Deirdre Stoelzle. “The fake cowboys are the ones wearing hats and Western shirts and are often overweight and have full beards. The real ones look oddly unobtrusive.”
I found Hasselstrom’s tendency to saddle westerners with a dramatic and somewhat pompous nobility that might enhance a Zane Gray novel — but suggests mythology rather than reality — a bit irritating (especially when the implicit suggestion is that eastern women and city dwellers lack the steadfastness, determination, and perseverance she attributes to her brethren).
Besides, for the most part, Leaning Into the Wind is about being rural, not western. Although the writers happen to live in the West, most of their stories could have taken place in the east, where blizzards, tornadoes, crop failures, and farm animals are not entirely unknown. (My own mother, and both of my grandmothers, often told stories that would fit quite naturally in this book — even though their stories were gleaned on farms in Michigan and Ontario.)
Moreover, after finishing the book, it’s difficult to make any hard and fast conclusions about these women, the West, or rural life. Yet I can see why Hasselstrom felt compelled to do just that.
The nature of this anthology inspires contemplation about living off the land and what that means in regard to character, lifestyle, and attitude. But contrary to Hasselstrom’s preconceived notion, a few of these women would never sweat in public, or work side-by-side with their men.
While several of these women tell tales about dispatching ailing animals to their maker with aplomb, others talk about taking extraordinary measures to save feeble, deformed newborns. A few of these women are tougher than boot leather, but just as many seem as soft as cotton.
In the end, the only thing I could conclude, was that rural life is harder than it should be.
Far too many of the women in this book talked about losing family farms. And far too many have had to scrimp on the necessities of life (even though they work from sun-up to sun-down).
A couple of these women harbor a lot of bitterness towards people who complain about the high price of meat and produce. But most merely tell stories about their parents, children, and neighbors that reflect too many hardships and too much disappointment.
For farmers, ranch hands, and townspeople, rural America sure doesn’t seem to offer as much as corporate America when it comes to medical plans, pensions, savings, or security. And that comes through all too poignantly in this collection.
Hasselstrom, Collier, and Curtis have done a great job editing Leaning Into the Wind. There’s some really beautiful writing in this volume, plus some humor, some tragedy, and a lot of heart.
Also included are two selections by Trudy Wardwell, a regular columnist for the Wet Mountain Tribune in Westcliffe, plus works by two authors who have written for Colorado Central — Peggy Godfrey of Moffat, and Laurie Wagner Buyer of Fairplay (so we know you’ll want to read this book).
–Martha Quillen