Memoirs of an Ex–Prom Queen

"This story, told with astringent wit, explores every facet and cliché of what it means to grow up female and beautiful." -San Francisco Chronicle


Sasha Davis, smart and pretty, was once an all-American teenage beauty queen. Full of potential, she was the only student at her midwestern high school to attend college on the East Coast. But soon her promise begins to falter. After starting graduate school in New York, Sasha gets married and drops out of school to take a clerical job. Consigned to the role of trophy wife, and already feeling old at twenty-four, she lives in fear of turning thirty-the year, in her mind, when her beauty will fade and life as she knows it will end. While she still has time, she embarks on an adventure of self-discovery and sexual exploration. Only after entering a second marriage and finding herself trapped by her responsibilities as a mother, does she finally begin to figure out what's gone wrong.

Poignant, funny, and breathtakingly honest, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen is a landmark in second-wave feminism and a must-read for anyone interested in what it really means to be a woman in America.

Alix Kates Shulman (b. 1932) is the celebrated author of fourteen books, including the New York Times bestselling novel Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (1972), which established her as a primary figure in feminism's second wave. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Shulman studied philosophy at Columbia University and received an MA at New York University. She became a political activist, joining the Congress of Racial Equality in 1961 and the Women's Liberation Movement in 1967. Her other novels include Burning Questions (1978), On the Stroll (1981), In Every Woman's Life . . . (1987), and Ménage (2012). She has also written the memoirs Drinking the Rain (1995), A Good Enough Daughter (1999), and To Love What Is (2008);a biography of Emma Goldman entitled To the Barricades (1971); and A Marriage Agreement and Other Essays: Four Decades of Feminist Writing (2012). Shulman lives in Manhattan and continues to speak frequently on issues such as writing, feminism, and reproductive choice.