The Mad Girls of New York
Book Feature - The Mad Girls of New York by Maya Rodale
HBL Note: Late last week I featured Hilde on the Record: Memoir of a Kid Crime Reporter by Hilde Lysiak and I can’t help but draw some comparisons between Hilde’s experience and Nellie Bly’s. First, Nellie paved the way for reporters like Hilde, pushing back against the idea that women can’t handle the hard reporting. But Hilde, more than a century later, is still has to fight against bullies targeting her gender.
The risks Nellie took to get the story, namely feigning insanity to get an inside look at what was happening in Blackwell's Island Insane Asylum for Women, is almost unimaginable for the time. I’m just so in awe of her story. Scroll down to read more.
Book Feature - The Mad Girls of New York by Maya Rodale
Book Feature - The Mad Girls of New York by Maya Rodale
From the publisher:
In 1887 New York City, Nellie Bly has ambitions beyond writing for the ladies pages, but all the editors on Newspaper Row think women are too emotional, respectable and delicate to do the job. But then the New York World challenges her to an assignment she'd be mad to accept and mad to refuse: go undercover as a patient at Blackwell's Island Insane Asylum for Women.
For months, rumors have been swirling about deplorable conditions at Blackwell’s, but no reporter can get in—that is, until Nellie feigns insanity, gets committed and attempts to survive ten days in the madhouse. Inside, she discovers horrors beyond comprehension. It's an investigation that could make her career—if she can get out to tell it before two rival reporters scoop her story.
From USA Today bestselling author Maya Rodale comes a rollicking historical adventure series about the outrageous intrigues and bold flirtations of the most famous female reporter—and a groundbreaking rebel—of New York City’s Gilded Age.
Book Feature - The Mad Girls of New York by Maya Rodale
