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If You
Ask Me: Essential Advice from Eleanor Roosevelt
by Eleanor Roosevelt, edited by Mary Jo Binker
c.1946, 1974, 2018, Atria Books
$25.00 / $34.00 Canada
245 pages
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Truth Contributor
What should you do?
When relationships break down, what then? Or you lose your
job and your bank account is depleted, your home is in
foreclosure, you’re a victim of discrimination, what do you
do? You ask yourself “What next?” and then you reach for
help, and with the new book If You Ask Me by
Eleanor Roosevelt, edited by Mary Jo Binker, the advice
you get might be decades old.
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Arguments on immigration, world issues, patriotism, and
messy politics. Minority issues, equal pay, family problems,
and Constitutional matters. Though these things may seem to
be problems strictly of the modern age, from 1921 until
1962, Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of our 32nd president, also
tackled these same topics in her books and magazine
articles. In those forty-one years, she ultimately penned
more than 600 pieces.
People from every walk of life consulted Mrs. Roosevelt for
advice: politicians asked her and women sought her out. Men
looked toward her wisdom and, says Binker, she had a
particular affection for teenagers (and vice versa). Though
she wrote the words in this book generations ago, her advice
is still relevant, even when contemporary viewpoints are
taken into consideration.
“She genuinely cared about people and their
problems,” says Binker, consulting editor for the Eleanor
Roosevelt Papers Project and editor of this book.
Mrs. Roosevelt ’s words were comforting, but she did not
suffer fools.
In 1944, she wrote that she believed women should receive
equal pay for doing “men’s jobs.” She was a big proponent of
organized labor, as she stated later that same year, and she
was famously, vociferously pro-racial equality and against
anti-Semitism. Politically, Roosevelt used her experiences
as First Lady to back up her beliefs on democracy, the
office of President, eliminating the electoral college, and
on dealing with political rifts within families. She hoped
that national health-care would become a reality. She called
for calm in times of trouble. She firmly favored birth
control, and believed that the future would turn out
alright.
The surprise inside If You Ask Me is twofold: in
reading the words that editor Mary Jo Binker collected, one
is reminded by their shiny relevance that everything old is
new again. Seventy-five years have passed and the same old
issues have returned like sharks to chum, giving readers a
dreadful, treading-water feeling. So what’s changed?
In a word, us: in the other half of the surprise is a
quaint, sweetly amusing look at a time when good girls
weren’t “necking,” businesswomen in “taverns” was worrisome,
and the First Lady believed that “rock ‘n’ roll” was a “fad
[that] will probably pass,” and that parents “needn’t take
it too seriously.” The amusement also comes from Roosevelt
’s wit and her ladylike rebukes that could be delivered on
razor blades.
Yes, she “cared about people”… but she could cut, too.
This book is obviously perfect for historians but anyone can
enjoy what’s inside these mostly-still-applicable words.
It’s easy to browse and fun, too, so read If You Ask Me.
That’s what you should do.
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