Long Road of Woman's Memory

In 1890s Chicago, a bizarre rumor swept through immigrant communities: a Devil Baby was hidden in the walls of Hull House, the settlement house founded by Jane Addams. Hundreds of women, many carrying losses too immense to speak directly, journeyed to see this impossible child. What they found instead was Addams herself, listening. This extraordinary book records what happened next. Women who came seeking a monstrous infant instead poured out stories of stillborn children, abusive husbands, dead sons, and lives crushed by poverty. Addams realized the Devil Baby was not a lie but a lens: a myth powerful enough to give voice to grief that had no other outlet. This is Addams at her most radical, arguing that legend and memory intertwine in women's lives, that sometimes a false story tells a truer truth than fact. A work of pioneering feminist sociology that asks how the marginalized remember, forget, and transform their pain into something they can bear.