1st Edition

The Price You Pay The Hidden Cost of Women's Relationship to Money

By Margaret Randall Copyright 1996

    In The Price We Pay, Margaret Randall interviews women from a wide range of economic, racial, and cultural backgrounds to reveal the role money plays in their lives. These women speak of their changing expectations and attitudes regarding money. Daughters of immigrants remember what money meant in the transition between worlds. They disclose the feelings that they have of stigma or shame at not having enough, guilt at having too much, and the lies, secrets and silences caused by these feelings. These personal stories are woven into a history of women's economics and chapters on family, work, the media, power and control, and lesbian economics.

    Words of Warning; Chapter 1 Money Talk; Chapter 2 The Almighty Dollar; Chapter 3 Mint Condition(ing); Chapter 4 From Shame to Resistance; Chapter 5 The Wealthy Woman; Chapter 6 How We Change; Chapter 7 The Egg Route;

    Biography

    Margaret Randall is a writer, photographer, teacher and political activist living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has published over sixty books and hundreds of articles, essays and poems including Sandino's Daughters (1981), Sandino's Daughters Revisited (1994), Gathering Rage (1992), Dancing with the Doe (1992), Walking to the Edge (1991), This is About Incest (1987) and Christians in the Nicaraguan Revolution (1983). She has taught at Trinity College, Oberlin College and the University of New Mexico.

    "Margaret Randall's The Price You Pay is a crucial and timely work that deconstructs women's culturally and politically shaped relationship with money... Randall provides a provocative exploration of stereotypes about women and money, and an astute analysis of how colonization and capitalism enforce and maintain economic status based on gender... If women were able to control and manage our resources with the same creativity, defiance, and discipline with which Randall has created this work, the earth would shift indeed." -- Ms., Oct. 1996
    "The Price You Pay is a taboo-breaking book that both veteran and new-generation feminists will likely find useful; equally important, many other readers, men and women alike, will recognize themselves in its pages." -- The Globe and Mail
    "Randall sought out answers to these questions by interviewing hundreds of women about their financial lives. The result is brilliant discourse in the dollar; specifically the lies, secrets and silences that all of us, men and women alike, inherit and pass on like a generational curse. This is a cathartic read. You will weep and even laugh with recognition." -- The Sunday Journal
    "Randall is one of those rare souls, who like the biblical prophets, insists that personal wholeness and social justice and inextricably linked. This book teems with wisdom and hope. Read it." -- The Sunday Journal
    "The Price You Pay abounds with enthralling accounts of the role money plays in a diverse range of women's lives. These women's attempts to untangle its influences are often riveting and, at times, inspirational... This book provides a powerful basis from which to consider political alternatives." -- The Lesbian Review of Books
    "Well of course! Leave it to Margaret Randall to give us something brand new, something necessary, something that will definitely help us to deal--better than we thought we could: Cheers for The Price You Pay!" -- June Jordan
    "Finally a book that unravels the complex mystery of what has kept many women from being powerful with money. The Price You Pay is brilliantly written, leaving not only with the answers of the past but more importantly with the solutions for your tomorrows." -- Suze Orman, author of You've Earned It, Don't Lose It
    "Margaret Randall's book is both a pioneering work of social analysis and a fascinating personal story, of the relationship of women to still another master--money. I believe that men as well as women will gain valuable insights from her work. They will be forced to think, perhaps for the first time, about a subject remarkably ignored until she decided to bring it to light." -- Howard Zinn
    "A brilliant discourse on the dollar, specifically, the lies, secrets and silences that all of us, men and women alike, inherit and pass on like a generational curse. This is a cathartic read. You will weep and even laugh with recognition. . . . Randall is one of those rare souls who, like the biblical prophets, insists that personal wholeness and social justice are inextricably linked. This book teems with wisdom and hope. Read it." -- Albuquerque Journal
    "... a most readable, trailblazing work... This book is a chisel in our hands. With it we can begin to crack open those concrete walls and see what's behind them. These women's voices are a searchlight on our shame, fear and anxiety about money, our need to keep up appearances and our life aspirations, showing us where the source of our basic values lies buried." -- Sharon Niederman, The New Mexican
    "...crucial and timely work that deconstructs women's culturally and politically shaped relationship with money. Randall provides a provocative exploration of stereotypes about women and money, and an astute analysis of how colonization and capitalism enforce and maintain economic status based on gender...If women were able to control and manage our resources with the same creativity, defiance, and discipline with which Randall has created this work, the earth would shift indeed." -- Therese Stanton, Ms., Oct 1996
    "This is a cathartic read. You will weep and even laugh with recognition.."The Price You Pay" could not be more timely...This book teams with wisdom and hope...Read it." -- The Sunday Journal
    "In the hands of a lesser writer, exploring the emotional costs of women's relationship to money might not work. But Margaret Randall has never been an ordinary writer. . . . The Price You Pay. . .is infused with a belief that spaces to live and breathe with more wholeness can be created as part of the task of transforming society." -- Emily Blumenfield, Dayton Voice