The Accidental Feminist: The Life of One Woman through War, Motherhood, and International Photojournalism

by Toby Molenaar

Overview

This is the story of an independent woman who is a model for our time—photographer Toby Molenaar. It begins in Holland during World War II, when her country is decimated by the occupying German army and she is literally left to starve. As a little girl, she learns to be self-sufficient—survival is the order of the day.

After the war, she finds love in Switzerland, marries, and starts a family. Her perfect life soon unravels however, when she meets the irresistible writer Fred Grunfeld, a foreign correspondent for Time, Life, and other magazines, and the new couple settles in Mallorca. Fred takes her along on his travels covering the world for various publications, from Alaska to Argentina, India, and China. Reinventing herself yet again, Toby learns her new trade as a photographer and becomes an eminent photojournalist.

When Husband Number Two leaves and her life in Mallorca evaporates, she is ready to carry on, taking on her own international assignments—until Husband Number Three enters the picture, in France, and a new child is born.
Courage, indomitable spirit, an open mind, and accountability only to herself are the stuff of this fascinating and inspirational story.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628724110
Publisher:	Arcade Publishing
Publication date:	05/06/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Toby Molenaar was born in Holland and moved to Switzerland after World War II.
Her photography has been featured in Life, Look, People, the Daily Telegraph magazine, and many other major publications. She is a member of both the American Society of Media Photographers and the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, is a founding member of the Image Bank, and took active part in UNESCO’s Silk Roads Project in the 1990s. She is the coproducer and cameraperson of the documentary films Benjamin Franklin, Citizen of Two Worlds and Memories of Monet, which have received international awards. She has three children and lives in the United States and France.

Editorial Reviews

03/31/2014
From WWII-devastated Rotterdam to the comforts of Sag Harbor, N.Y., photojournalist Molenaar travels through an extraordinarily wide world in this always absorbing memoir. Readers will: visit Mallorca, Brazil, Tanzania, and Delhi; witness the Bengal Lancers charge; spend time with the prostitutes of the Crepuri (Brazil) gold miners and the burqa-covered women of the Pathans; travel along China’s Silk Road and the pilgrimage path to Santiago de Compostela; meet poet Robert Graves, and novelists Lawrence Durrell and Joseph Heller; and see “one of the world’s most extraordinary galleries of pre-historic art” while traveling with the Spanish Foreign Legion. In between, Molenaar shares stories about her three husbands and blended family, as well as her working life as a writer-photographer, making award-winning documentaries (Memories of Monet). At the book’s core is Molenaar’s curiosity and learning about this wide world—a crafty and engaging way to teach the reader. Reading her is like meeting a new acquaintance with an abundance of pithy and marvelous tales. Photos. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"This is the remarkable story of a survivor who grew up in war-torn Europe and surmounted impossible odds to become an eminent photojournalist.
Throughout this poignant, beautiful memoir, Toby Molenaar documents her adventures and her husbands, traveling the world on assignment. She never stops reinventing herself as wife, mother, and artist. Hers is a fascinating struggle to achieve both independence and love."

Patricia Bosworth, author of Jane Fonda: The Private Life of a Public Woman

From the Publisher

2014-04-02
A Dutch-born woman's memoir about how she stumbled into an unexpected career as a globe-trotting photojournalist. Molenaar's fascination with faraway places began when she was a child. But her early years in Rotterdam were nothing like the magical worlds that populated her daydreams. She felt alienated from her family, as though she was always "slightly in the wrong." When World War II intervened, Germany occupied Holland, creating hardship and misery for all Dutch citizens. After the war, a traumatized Molenaar left for Switzerland. In between her first marriage and divorce, she discovered photography. It was only after she met, married and began working alongside distinguished magazine journalist Frederic Grunfeld, however, that she was able to transform her love for travel and image-making into a way of life she "had not dared to imagine since childhood." They made the Spanish island of Mallorca their home and hobnobbed with the likes of Robert Graves, John Cheever and Anthony Burgess. In the meantime, joint assignments took them to locations all over the world, including Alaska, Afghanistan and India. But as Molenaar grew into her profession, and into her husband's equal, the marriage collapsed, and she found herself forced to make a living to support herself and her children. The author's career blossomed, and soon, she was going on shoots in such exotic locales as Brazil, Tanzania and Mongolia. Between adventures, she married again and moved to France, where she made acquaintances with Joseph Heller and Lawrence Durrell. She was unable to disobey the "inner summons" to adventure, and she grew apart from her husband and divorced. That Molenaar has led a challenging but privileged life is clear. Her narrative, however, is a structurally undisciplined hodgepodge of memories, anecdotes and travelogue that is more likely to irk readers than engage them. Self-indulgent and only occasionally interesting.

Kirkus Reviews