JELL-O Girls

January 22, 2018
In this intimate and intriguing debut memoir, Rowbottom explores the lives of the women in her family, specifically her mother and grandmother, members of the family that once owned the Jell-O company. She evaluates 100-plus years of Jell-O’s marketing campaigns through a feminist lens, exploring how Jell-O presented itself as a quick and easy dessert solution for white, middle-class women who, at the turn of the century, found themselves alone in the kitchen without “maids and nannies and cooks.” Rowbottom describes Jell-O’s early campaigns (“Teaching women, it turns out, was a tenet of Jell-O’s marketing... Jell-O, so pliable, so good, teaching them how to mold themselves to match it, pliable and good”) and provides a history of food’s role in the American imagination—including the low-calorie-food trend and later ad campaigns that sold Jell-O based on nostalgia. At the same time, Rowbottom explores how the women in her own family negotiated the social constructs of the times and within the family business: her grandmother Midge gave up her own aspirations to write when she had children; later, her mother Mary’s health complaints were ignored and dismissed as “hysterical” by doctors, resulting in a late cancer diagnosis. Throughout, Rowbottom asserts that a curse afflicted her family: “The curse was patriarchy.” Though Rowbottom’s focus on the “curse” sometimes distracts from the narrative, her memoir offers a fascinating feminist history of both a company and a family.

May 1, 2018
Rowbottom chronicles her relationship to a legendary American food brand and the dark underside of its history.Jell-O was the author's "birthright." Purchased by her mother's great-great-great-uncle in 1899 for $450, the company was sold for $67 million two decades later. Jell-O gave the maternal side of Rowbottom's family unprecedented access to money, privilege, and power. At the same time, the wealth also seemed to bring family members "all manner of...misfortune," including alcoholism, cancer, and suicide. Her mother, Mary, believed that her own problems and health crises had come about as a result of this family curse, so she "rarely ate the stuff." The author begins the story with her grandmother Midge, who dreamed of becoming a journalist but instead found herself saddled with a traditional family life--which Jell-O celebrated in its many advertisements--that left her feeling unfulfilled. Growing up during the 1950s and '60s, her daughter Mary longed for life as an artist. However, the pressures for her to conform to traditional female roles ate away at her resolve, pushed her into a series of unhealthy relationships, and destroyed her well-being. Determined to understand both the Jell-O curse and her mother's emotionally fraught past, Rowbottom researched not only her family's troubled history, but also the history of Jell-O itself. She looked at how ad campaigns throughout the 20th century used Jell-O to prop up ideals of womanhood that either enforced ideas about women as domestic caretakers or made them feel guilty about "careers outside the home." The author also explores the medically inexplicable ailments that not only befell her mother, but also--as late as 2011-- young girls living in LeRoy, New York, the birthplace of Jell-O. Rowbottom delivers a moving memoir of a daughter seeking to understand her mother, family, and the place of women in American society, and the narrative also serves as a thoughtful, up-close-and-personal feminist critique of a cultural icon.A book brimming with intelligence and compassion.

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Starred review from April 1, 2018

Rowbottom paints a fascinating portrait of the family behind one of America's most famous desserts. In 1899, the author's great-great-great-uncle bought the Jell-O patent from its inventor for $450, and reaped the financial gains as cupboards across the nation stocked the fruity gelatin treat. The privilege the family experienced as a result of the Jell-O empire was tainted, however, with some considering it cursed by a string of misfortunes, including bouts of cancer, suicides, and alcoholism. Rowbottom strives to tell her family history, particularly that of the women of the Jell-O empire, whose experiences were largely results of the times. She successfully draws readers into the details of their lives, which are at turns both intriguing and mundane. As Jell-O sales continue to decline, this account illuminates the rise of both an American product and dynasty. VERDICT The renown of Jell-O will attract a variety of readers to this memoir, and the storytelling will keep them turning pages to the very end.--Mattie Cook, Flat River Community Lib., MI

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2018

Jell-O, bland? In fact, since Rowbottom's great-great-great-uncle smartly bought the Jell-O patent from its inventor in 1889, her family has endured a sadly high rate of suicides, alcoholism, cancer, and other inexplicable illness. Here, Rowbottom draws on archives furnished by her mother before her death to write a memoir that could spring the family curse.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2018

Jell-O, bland? In fact, since Rowbottom's great-great-great-uncle smartly bought the Jell-O patent from its inventor in 1889, her family has endured a sadly high rate of suicides, alcoholism, cancer, and other inexplicable illness. Here, Rowbottom draws on archives furnished by her mother before her death to write a memoir that could spring the family curse.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.