Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
BOOKS Difficult Women praised in new book
K aren Karbo was only 17 when her mother died.
As a young woman suddenly without an older role model, Karbo found herself drawn to stories of extraordinary women, devouring one biography after another in search of inspiration, strength and lessons on life.
“Some of these women were phenomenally difficult,” Karbo says of their unwillingness to bend to the expectations of the societies in which they lived. “I like to say we’re all daughters of the age and time in which we’re raised. At the time these women grew up, they were really pushing against a lot.”
Years later, as a novelist and non-fiction writer, she returned to several of her favorites, writing a series of short books on women such as Coco Chanel, Georgia O’Keefe, Katharine Hepburn and Julia Child — “kick-ass women” as Karbo called them at the time.
In her new book, “In Praise of Difficult Women: Life Lessons from 29 Heroines Who Dared to Break the Rules,” she offers brief looks at the lives of women from artist Frida Kahlo and aviator Amelia Earhart to actress Carrie Fisher and author J.K. Rowling.
It’s a book that at first blush seems timed to the rise of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, though Karbo says that’s entirely by coincidence.
“As you know, it takes a very long time to write a book,” she says. “It’s interesting, because now that it’s coming out seemingly at the exact right moment I go out and people act like I just dashed it off.”
In truth, Karbo started work on the book three long years ago after a conversation with her editor; during their talk, Karbo mentioned her theory that many inspirational women she admired had a quality that society might define as “difficult.”
“We started talking about the idea of putting together these iconic women and looking at their lives through this lens of being difficult,” she says. “Any time you put your own needs about anyone else’s, any time you speak out — to be a woman and push forward with your own motivation and passion will eventually get you labeled difficult.”
In the fall of 2016, as she continued work on the book, Karbo says she, like many Americans, anticipated that Hillary Clinton might become the first woman president.
“I was essentially going to write these longer essays on how we got to (a woman president),” she says. “This kind of approach of, ‘Here’s my hat tipped to all these women who came before me.’
“And, of course, what happened, happened.”
So Karbo expanded the pool of women to include more current women — including Clinton, actress-writer Lena Dunham and comedian Margaret Cho — and wrestled over how many to include.
“There was a very much rotating list of who was in and who was out,” Karbo says. “Originally (the publisher) thought 30, but I said, ‘Twenty-nine is a much sexier number.’ For poetic reasons it was just sort of settled upon.”
Karbo, who grew up in Whittier, Calif., and spent parts of her childhood in Laguna Beach and Newport Beach, says her earliest model of a woman who fit the difficult mold was Polish grandmother Luna, a dress designer in Los Angeles who lived an independent life — her studio was in her Hollywood bungalow, and while she lived alone, she had “gentleman callers.”
“She was just a very serious woman about her profession and about her clients,” Karbo says. “I thought that was very exotic.”
As for the current status of women and feminism in the United States, well, there’s still work to be done, Karbo says.
“When I got my book contract, it was sort of the era in 2015 when all these starlets were coming out and saying, ‘Oh, I’m not a feminist, I don’t need that,’ “she says. “If there’s one thing good to say about the Trump presidency, now people are really aware, and young women are very aware — if they’re paying attention — that this is serious business. That their rights are being eroded, and that this is once again something that needs to be taken seriously.
“It was just luck that it fell from the sky at this moment,” Karbo says of her book’s timing. “But we still have to live our lives every day, and that’s where we figure out how to be difficult.”