Jo Ann Levy

I remember really liking this book back when I read it in 8th grade. I was going through a bit of a non-fiction kick, having just read The Transformation of Cinema, 1907-1915 that somehow shook my 12-year-old world to the core on all the history they neglected to teach us. I remember thinking it was a bit dry but fascinating; we learn about the gold rush in California at school in such a superficial way that learning about how women specifically navigated the wild west really brought it alive for me. I still remember the stories of women making bank from laundry, opening inns, becoming fully self-sufficient businesspersons. I also remember the less fortunate stories—the section on prostitution and price dependent on race was crazy sad to me and all the preventable death they had to endure. I honestly still think about this book when talking about western American gender relations the rare times it's brought up. Anyways I liked it, a bit dry and not as wide in scope as I wanted to be (I think I just wanted more), but good nevertheless.… (meer)

When Levy first began to do research, some numbers just didn't add up. Men who wrote about the California Gold Rush of 1849 were quick to say that those racing to the gold fields were almost all exclusively male, but statistics and the historical record do not bear that out. Levy kept looking, thinking that someone, somewhere, had to have written a history of the women of the Gold Rush, and although she found books about Australians, Chileans, blacks, Irish, French, and other national and ethnic groups represented among the 49ers, there was not a single book about the women.

In They Saw the Elephant, Levy tells us how the women traveled to California, what they did when they got there, and for several of them, their stories are told all the way to the ends of their lives. I have read a few books about women in the Old West (including the period and setting of the Gold Rush), and I'm happy to say that Levy doesn't travel over old ground; Lotta Crabtree and Lola Montez are the only "repeats" in the long and varied list of women she tells readers about. That was much appreciated.

I am fortunate to live in a time when so many women's stories are finally being told. Many of the female 49ers were every bit as strong, inventive, and colorful as their male counterparts, and thanks to JoAnn Levy, I now know more about them and will continue to learn with the bibliography she provides in her book.… (meer)