SYNOPSIS
Overview
Aphrodite in Jeans is a manifesto and an exploration. It gives voice to women at the prime of their lives at a time when traditionally they have started to fade away. It invokes the wonder and constant imbalance of motherhood, the ache of watching parents age, the bittersweetness of a divorce that is right for everyone involved, and the manic roller coaster of being single when marriage and creating a family are no longer the primary goal.
It invites reflection and provides signposts. It amuses and soothes.
Readers have said repeatedly that Aphrodite in Jeans speaks what is in their hearts. The essays in this collection validate and celebrate the opportunity of midlife reflection, heralding it as a call to adventure and a challenge to embrace life more fully.
Author’s Statement: Why I wrote this book
Starting in my early forties, I began having a new kind of conversation with my friends. Mostly this conversation was with women friends, but there were men who were having it, too. This was a conversation of searching, questioning, exhilaration and freedom. This was a conversation that was suddenly aware of the beauty and transience of life. This was a conversation about our children and what staggering things we were learning from them. And this was a conversation about aging and death as we became caretakers of our own parents. We were taking things apart, looking for meaning, seeing life for the first time and eager to grasp it more fully than ever before. I realized we were all feeling, thinking and experiencing many of the same things in different ways.
Bursting with a kind of super-nova explosion of desire to get my thoughts out in the world, I started emailing my friends long accounts of my life. They responded with a combination of intense gratitude and indignant anger at me for not writing more. I turned some of these thoughts into essays. I captured others in email and my journals. There was something definitely going on, and the words I was being given tapped right into its source.
I wrote this book because I had to. It was too important a conversation to continue having alone.
What the book contains
The book is comprised of an introduction and thirty-two essays. Three “bonus track” essays are also included. The nature of the essays can be divided into three categories:
• personal relationships
• the adventures of motherhood
• aging and death of parent
The essays range between being amusing, self-deprecating, reflective and literary. The bonus tracks are funny or odd essays that enhance the body of the book in a tangential way.
What this book brings to the table
The reaction to the book proves that it strikes a deep appreciative chord amongst both women and men. In conversation, workshops, emails and festivals, the reaction to this book is one of immediate interest, bursts of laughter as excerpts are read, and then nods of appreciative recognition. Conversations about the material usually turn to the experiences of the readers; the essays seem to be a catalyst for self-reflection and joy that so many hitherto unvoiced emotions are finally being expressed.
Structure
The book is structured thematically into three sections.
After the introduction, the first ten essays are about the call to adventure that came into the author’s complacent but stagnant life in the form of a new male friendship. The non-sexual relationship opens her eyes to a challenge to experience life more fully; her marriage is questioned and finally ends. Also in the first section are several essays about the author’s aging father and two young boys, and her relationship caught in the middle of nurturing lives at either end of the age spectrum.
The middle third of the book is about what happens when a woman finds herself single and exuberantly alive for the first time in many years. The first half of this section contains essays describing the exhilaration of new relationships, harrowing forays into unexplored territories of femininity, and reflections on healing and preserving as much love in the family as possible in the midst of upheaval. The second half of this section contains essays about relationships, why all these wonderful new relationships sometimes go horribly wrong, and how it is that we men and women have such a hard time despite our need and love for each other.
The final third of the book returns to some of the earlier themes. Essays about personal triumphs and the final death of the father seen in the first part of the book are commingled with musings about when the next important relationship will come about, and how it will be managed when, and if, it does.
About The Author
The passion to write has been at the core of Katherine Shirek Doughtie’s life since early childhood. An only child of divorced parents, she grew up in Southern California in the early 70’s. By the time she was in high school she had become angry, idealistic and political. She left Pasadena eager to get involved in the social revolution she had watched evolving out of the 60’s.
Katherine worked her way through college, doing anything she could to stay alive and keep in school. At various times while pursuing her studies she was employed as a busboy, waitress, projectionist, legal secretary, stagehand, pizza deliverer and cook. She changed schools several times, finding unexpected avenues as she struggled to sustain her passion to learn; she attended the University of California at Santa Cruz, U.C. Berkeley, and Bennington College before returning to UCSC to get a BA with honors in Literature and Creative Writing. Her thesis project consisted of a 1930’s detective novel and accompanying screenplay. She went on to apply to the Screenwriting program in the UCLA Motion Picture and Film school. After being accepted, she returned to Southern California and earned her Masters Degree in 1983.
After graduate school, Katherine spent several years writing scripts and trying to break into Hollywood. She wrote six audio adaptations of short stories by Louis L’Amour, produced as fully dramatized books-on-tape by Bantam Audio. She oversaw the writing of three more adaptations, mentoring other writers through the arduous adaptation process. These productions were cut for radio production and are currently syndicated on over 100 stations nationwide. She went on to write and sell several film scripts based on the most successful adaptations. During this time she also wrote ten original feature scripts, a spec TV episode and a Western epic novel.
Katherine learned early on that hard work, tenacity and a bold spirit could accomplish many things. She traveled around the world when she was in her early 20s, staying at Shakespeare & Co. in Paris, taking a train down the Malaysian peninsula, and visiting mainland China. She has been the technical director for a Gilbert & Sullivan opera company since the early 1980’s, and has toured the country many times.
After the birth of her first child, Katherine began shifting from novels and screen writing, and began to focus more on essays and magazine articles. Many of the essays in her current collection, Aphrodite in Jeans: Adventure Tales about Men, Midlife and Motherhood, were written during the years when her children were young, her father was old, and she was in the middle attempting to balance a multitude of responsibilities. She also wrote numerous articles about technical theatre for several magazines nationwide.
Aside from writing, Katherine is a trained martial artsist, practices yoga, loves theatre (both backstage and from the house) and helps nurture as many passions as possible in her children’s lives. She is a seeker of truth, an adventurer of the spirit, and considers that living life mindfully is one of our few true imperatives as human beings.
Reviews
BOOK REVIEW BY STEVE NAKAMOTO
Author of Men Are Like Fish: What Every Woman Needs To Know About Catching A Man and Dating Rocks! The 21 Smartest Moves Women Make for Love
As a relationship author and online advisor, I receive a lot of new books for authors and publishers to review and endorse. Some of the ones that I come across are only useful for a narrow audience, while others have tremendous value for the masses. This book definitely falls into the latter category.
And there is so much more!
This is a flat-out darn good book --- beautifully written, cleverly insightful, and a joy to read. It is a sensitive journey through female midlife (I truly wish that there was a book that was the male equivalent!) with humor and intelligence mixed into almost every paragraph.
The flow of the book brings out stories of beauty, moments that are profound and those moments that we would rather not see. I like the fact that I can at one moment enjoy a serene look at a gentle stream, then be jarred by the reality of a horrific moment, such as the one described in Context Sensitivity where “all time stops and diners suddenly look like Diane Arbus prints, braying with harsh, dissonant laughter. Waitresses are serving grotesque platters of food; everyone is oddly-shaped, their teeth too large for their mouths; their clothes cloying and uncomfortable.” That is one of those moments of resonance we have all had although the situation and participants may be different, but the recognition is the same.
For many female readers, they will instantly get a feeling of identification like “You’ve walked in my shoes” or “You’re telling my life.” The author has found a unique series of well-chosen stories that needed to be told and people will hunger for the humor, sensitivity, and inspiration that can be transferred into their own meanings of life’s experiences.
Aphrodite is designed in bite-size pieces to be read at the reader’s convenience. So while this book is an easy read, it is also packed with the literary meat of 250 thought-provoking, image-creating pages.
In the end, you also wish that the book could go on even further. You can’t say that about very many books these days!
As a man, I particularly enjoyed:
* Author Katherine Doughtie’s strength is her ability to get the essential reality of a situation and then describe it in a way that is immediately recognizable. People are relieved that someone has put “that indescribable thing” into words and it’s very satisfying to them. She just “gets it” whether it’s a relationship, a situation, or a casual observation.
* The book acts as somewhat of a two-way mirror. People will be able to see themselves in these stories and since everyone is different, every reader will take away a different message. There is therefore a personalization that is shared, while also having experienced a universal theme. It seems to validate and illuminate what people go through no matter where they are on their life’s journey.
* The stories will help men understand the subtle differences that women experience in their adventurous lives. A woman’s life has more texture in most cases to our own. I feel a little bit closer to understanding the riches that a woman can add to a man’s life by finding value in some of the smallest, yet profound moments. A woman can fill in the emotion and color of the moments in time that go by without regard for the average man. A man’s midlife can be commonly a path of boredom, isolation, and decline while a woman’s can be one of self-renewal and universal bonding.
This book should become an underground bestseller initially and who knows this may just be the book that every woman over the age of 30 will proudly own. It’s the kind of book that puts every woman’s life in its proper context…to be appreciated for both the struggles and successes no matter how small or large.
This is a one-of-kind book that could help sprout a new form of community where women can come together and share their experiences with the common bond of this great piece of work. (Maybe some enlightened men and potential love partners will take part, too!)
Katherine Doughtie is a special kind of writer. You’ll truly appreciate her unique literary gift along with her personal sense of meaning that everyday presents to us if only we were more attuned to it.
This is a book that I guarantee you’ll like.
