A review by nobodyspoet
Frontier Grit: The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women by Marianne Monson

While I don't dispute that the subjects of these profiles are interesting and I'll definitely be seeking out further writings on/by many of them, I found the author's overall inflection to be, at best, astoundingly naive. In the introduction Monson claims an attempt at as true "objectivity" as can be managed within the profiles, though there's a sheen of starry-eyed subjectivity that emanates from just about everything, compounded by sudden shift to her own first person aside for the shoddy moral conclusions at the end of each chapter. Her limp vocabulary with regards to various forms of institutionalized racism such as slavery within Clara Brown's story and residential schools within Zitkála-Šá's is glaring, as is the almost dismissive tone she uses with regards to the history of forced religious conversion against Indigenous communities, which she never seems to take as anything more than actions happening within a vacuum. From a personal standpoint I also think the inclusion of Charley Parkhurst is scummy, and in an academic view think it's just willfully ignorant. Whether Parkhurst would have identified within modern terminology as a trans man aside, he very clearly lived his life as a man, and Monson's breathy wonderings about "what might have happened if she had attempted to be open about her gender and still pursue her passion" [pg 176] are just tasteless. Overwhelmingly do not recommend, which is a shame because this really could have filled such an under-served niche.