Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen — Alix Kates Shulman

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.