Yellin, Emily

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YELLIN, Emily

PERSONAL:

Daughter of Carol Lynn Yellin. Education: University of Wisconsin at Madison, B.A., 1983; Northwestern University, M.S., 1989.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Memphis, TN. Agent—c/o Thorndike Press, 295 Kennedy Dr., Waterville, ME 04901.

CAREER:

Freelance journalist. Taught nonfiction writing at University of Memphis, c. late 1990s.

WRITINGS:

Our Mothers' War: American Women at Home and at the Front during World War II, Free Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to periodicals, including the New York Times and Newsweek.

SIDELIGHTS:

When she came across a batch of her mother's old letters in the attic, journalist Emily Yellin was inspired to write a book about one of the biggest untold stories of the twentieth century: the vital role American women played in World War II and how their wartime experiences drastically changed society. The letters "opened up a world that I had never really considered," the author explained in an interview on JerryJazzMusician.com. "While I knew that my mother quit her job as an editor at Readers Digest to join the Red Cross, and serve in Saipan, what I didn't understand were her everyday experiences. The letters allowed me to connect to them and to her. And as a journalist I realized that I could help other people connect to their own mother's or grandmother's wartime experiences." The result of Yellin's research is her book, Our Mothers' War: American Women at Home and at the Front during World War II.

Our Mothers' War profiles all sorts of women and how they participated—at home or abroad—in World War II. Yellin talks about how women worked in manufacturing plants building airplanes, tanks, guns, and munitions, or became nurses, volunteers, Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency) personnel, Red Cross workers, entertainers in the USO, or even military cargo pilots and spies. But she also talks about the humbler, but no less vital, roles, such as jobs at banks or other essential positions left empty by men who had gone off to war. Yellin also discusses the parts actresses, prostitutes, and even fictional female characters played. The author does more than just recognize how important it was for these women to support the war effort, however. She also discusses the chauvinism they still faced from men and how they overcame it; and she explains how many women came to understand and appreciate their ability to work and support themselves, which sense of empowerment helped fuel the women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Many critics of Our Mothers' War praised Yellin's effort to bring attention to the women of World War II. Laura Shapiro, writing in the New York Times BookReview, noted that "what makes Yellin's book especially valuable is that she doesn't stop with heartening stories.… Instead, she keeps right on going, beyond the courage and patriotism and straight into the shameful, officially sanctioned horrors of the war years." Yellin writes about how many women were persecuted for being lesbians, or blacks, or for supposedly transmitting venereal disease. She even describes how one female pilot was killed when someone put granulated sugar in her plane's engine, causing the aircraft to crash. Though the perpetrator was likely a male soldier, the military quickly covered up the story. Even though Shapiro felt Yellin "has done first-rate research and reporting" on these issues, the critic still felt that "she pulls back just at the point where her powerful material demands critical analysis." Nevertheless, School Library Journal writer Alan Gropman called Our Mothers' War "an important book because the role played by women in World War II has been regularly ignored." And Karyn L. Barr concluded in Entertainment Weekly that the results are "educational and dishy."