Selected Product:
| Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities
Paperback
Author: Alexandra Robbins
Publisher: Hyperion
Release Date: 2005-07-06
ISBN-10: 0786888598
ISBN-13: 9780786888597
List Price: $13.95
Average Customer Rating:
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Now in paperback, the New York Times bestseller-with over 91,000 copies in print-that takes you behind closed doors to see what really goes on in America's sororities ver wonder what sorority life is really like? In Pledged, bestselling author Alexandra Robbins goes undercover to expose the dark side of collegiate sisterhood-the psychological abuse, hazing rituals, and widespread body image disorders-while at the same time introducing us to many of the intelligent, successful women within its ranks. The result is a compelling sociological exploration of the powerful influence that these organizations wield over young women today. With its fly-on-the-wall voyeurism and remarkable insight, Pledged paints a sharp-eyed portrait of the intriguing and paradoxical world of modern-day sororities.
Pretty Good Read
| Customer Rating: | | After reading this book, it gives someone like me (non-affiliated) a real look into the lives of sororities. I think that I respect the pressures that sorority women encounter more then I did before. It also satisfied any little caveats of curiosity that I had. I am in the process of founding my own group (non-affiliated) and was researching the group dynamics of different organizations which led to me reading this book. I think that it gave me the pros and cons very succinctly along with a good idea of what to avoid and what to incorporate in my endeavors. |
Agenda becomes clear by the end of the book
| Customer Rating: | | I just finished this book and for the first half of it I enjoyed it. Towards the second half it became clear that the author went into the book intending to slam the Greek system. I was in a fraternity in college, and knew many girls similar to the girls depicted in the book. I enjoyed their stories, but when it came to Robbins' criticisms of the rush and pledging systems she did a poor job of remaining unbiased. I found her suggestions laughable. I liked her descriptions of other collegiate social groups that provided better environments than sororities that had less than ten members. That's not an organization, that's a lunch table. I also had a huge problem with the chapter towards the end of the book that served no other purpose than to unveil sorority secrets. That was just wrong. |
really boring book
| Customer Rating: | | I couldn't finish this book. I found it very difficult to keep my interest. I was never really shocked by anything presented, and could not have cared less about the characters. I think we all know sororities do both good and bad things. It's all politics in the end. |
Inside sorority life
| Customer Rating: | In this expose into sorority life, Robbins went undercover as an undergraduate to rush, and ultimately join, a sorority. What she found was disturbing, to say the least. She experienced an alcohol soaked, catfight-intensive life, in which young women constantly competed with one another for male attention. What is more surprising, though, is that so many of the young women in sororities seemed to be miserable. Clearly, Robbins is very, very critical of the sororities she followed in this book. That said, she's much less critical of the individual sisters. Indeed, she stresses the promising future and intelligence these women have apart from their sororities. In completing her study, Robbins surveyed both traditionally white and traditionally African-American sororities. She concludes that historically black sororities have stayed far closer to the sororities' purported missions of sisterhood, philanthropy, and scholarship than have majority-white sororities. Still, she finds problems and racism in both Overall, Pledged was a fascinating read that seemed to accomplish its goal of sympathizing with sorority sisters, while excoriating the larger organizations. Robbins ends her work with some suggestions for improving sorority life, such as delaying rush until after the freshman year so that students can experience more of college life before they decide if they want to join the Greek system. Whether these would change much, I'm not so sure, but I found this book interesting, and was especially taken with the stories of the four young women Robbins followed over the course of a year.
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Good, but a memoir would be better.
| Customer Rating: | | I was in a sorority and Pledged brought many good memories for me. I'm still best friends with three of my sisters, so I think it's important for the reader not to believe all the stereotypes this book reveals. My major complaint with Pledged is that it's too long and the storyline seems to be all over the place. Instead of chronologically following the different lives of the girl, I think the author should have just focused on one girl or one group of girls at a time. This would have made it easier for me to remember who did what and this also would have made it easier to see how the individual girls changed in reaction to the various problems they encountered. My other criticism is that I had a hard time accepting the truth value of some of the stories because the author herself was not a member of these sororities nor was she ever actually in a sorority. That's kind of like a journalist explaining to you what it "feels" like to be a doctor. She can tag along and watch things from a distance, but she's never really going to understand what it means to be something she's not. I wish someone would write another book about sorority life in the memoir form kind of like Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood. There are two good fraternity memoirs called COLLEGE LIFE EXTREME: Lies, Sex, Drugs and Violenceand Goat: A Memoir that really give you a sense of what Greek Life can be like from the perspective of fratboys. A memoir written by a real sorority girl would be much more engrossing than the work of a journalist, but even if someone does write a book like this, I think it's silly to believe that there is some uniform type of Greek experience. The reality is every college is different and their Greek systems will be different too. |
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