How cycling strengthened feminism – the Santa Barbara Independent

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How cycling strengthened feminism

Author Peter Zheutlin discusses “Spin: A Novel Based on a (Mainly) True Story”

By Matt Kettmann

Credit: Courtesy

When Massachusetts-based author Peter Zheutlin discovered that a lost aunt had been instrumental in increasing the popularity of cycling in the late 19th century, he decided to tell his story. In doing so, Zheutlin educates the world about his great-great-aunt Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, aka Annie Londonderry, who embarked on a cycling trip around the world with a much publicized stop in Santa Barbara on May 15, 1895. He published a documentary account, Around the world on two wheels: Annie Londonderry’s extraordinary ride in 2007 and this year romanticized the saga in Spin: a novel based on a (mostly) true story.

Along with the incredible life story of Londonderry, Zheutlin’s books highlight how essential the bicycle has become in freeing women from traditional homebound existence, strengthening suffrage, feminism and freedom. personal along the way. He tells us more about the book below.

Not many people know this story, but it is part of your family history. Did you grow up hearing a lot of talk or did you have to find out on your own?

Until 1993, this story was completely forgotten in history. That year my mother, Baila, received a letter from a complete stranger who was researching Annie’s story based on some old newspaper stories he had found. His research led him to believe that my mother was a descendant of Annie.

From the information in the letter, it was clear that she was – Annie was my mother’s grandfather’s sister. But she had never heard of Annie or any member of her family taking this extraordinary trip. So, like my mom, this was the first time I had heard of it too.

Unable to help me, I put the letter and the copies of these old newspaper reports, which were attached, in a binder. Over the years that followed, I asked older family members if they had ever heard of Annie and came back empty every time. In 2003 the same guy wrote to us again to see if we had learned anything over the years, but we hadn’t. But this time I decided to dig.

Credit: Courtesy

The bare outlines of the story were so strange and improbable. Why were Annie and her trip so secret? I don’t know, but I suspect that Annie was chased or was chased by family members who saw nothing redemptive about a woman who left her husband and three children, all of them under the age of 6, to go for a walk around the world by bike. Other than Annie herself, once the trip was over, no one was interested, I guess, in making her a legend.

But I became addicted to the story and spent years searching and finding hundreds of accounts of her travels around the world because she was a gifted self-proponent and a great copy. While doing this work, I also hired a specialist in Jewish genealogy to help me determine if Annie had any direct living descendants – I am a collateral descendant – who might be able to shed light on this. mysterious woman. And we finally found Annie’s only grandchild, my second cousin, Mary.

I wrote to her, not knowing if she would even respond, but she was elated. She not only knew Annie, who died when Mary was 16, but her basement turned out to be a repository of many artifacts from Annie’s bike trip.

My first book on Annie, a documentary account of her trip, was published in 2007, and it did a lot to raise awareness of her story. This book was translated into several languages ​​and, in the years that followed Around the world on two wheels was released, a short documentary was made about her (The new woman) and a musical called Turn, inspired by Annie, has toured across Canada. Another musical, Drive, was produced in London in early 2020, and a comedy, The wheel woman, debuted at the Orlando Shakes Theater Festival in October 2020.

A street in Bend, Oregon is named after him. The book itself has been translated and published in German, Italian, Korean and Czech. Great Big Story, a subsidiary of CNN, produced an animated short. Articles have appeared in dozens of publications around the world, book chapters have been written, countless blog posts have appeared, and a children’s book will be released in 2021. Annie was also the subject of an episode by Travel Channel. Mysteries at the museum.

In November 2019, as part of her “Overlooked No More†series of late obituaries of women and people of color forgotten in their time, the New York Times published a complete obituary of Annie; he took half a page in the paper, with a photograph. The same obituary appeared the next day in the Boston Globe. The West End Museum, dedicated to keeping alive the memory of Boston’s old West End, the neighborhood Annie fled in 1894 and was razed to the ground during the wave of “urban renewal” of the 1950s, has mounted a exhibition about it in 2020.

I had a Sterling bicycle from 1890 restored and painted the color of Annie (cream white), a bicycle now on loan as part of an exhibition on women and cycling which began at the Bloomfield Museum of Science in Israel and who has traveled to Germany, Poland, and, in 2021, will make its final stopover in Ottawa, Canada. As she would have hoped, Annie’s story has been saved from the trash of history and it’s rewarding to watch, to say the least.

Why were bicycles essential to women’s freedom?

I could write a book on this subject! In short, cycling truly revolutionized the lives of women at the turn of the 20th century. It gave them mobility they had never had before, there was a feeling of physical liberation and freedom that came with sliding on a bike, and the practicality demanded clothes more suited to riding than the ones. long skirts and corsets, and therefore women began to wear bloomers. Annie herself underwent a complete makeover in her dress as she traveled the world, starting with long skirts and a fitted waistcoat, but in the end she was wearing men’s riding gear, including pants. She really challenged Victorian notions of female decorum. The bicycle has become a tool for empowerment and a symbol of the women’s suffrage movement. As Susan B. Anthony once said, “The bicycle has done more to empower women than anything else in the world.

Tell us about his visit to Santa Barbara. Why was it on his route? How did people react?

Annie arrived in San Francisco from Japan aboard a steamboat in March 1985. Accompanied by a prominent SF cyclist named Mark Johnson, she quietly spent six weeks on horseback from San Francisco to Los Angeles, arriving in Santa Barbara on the night of May 13, 1895. A major bicycle racing event has been scheduled in the city for May 15, which the Santa Barbara Daily Independent predicted would be “the greatest day in wheelmen circles that Santa Barbara has ever seen”.

Annie was there; a reporter noted how tanned she was. She was quite famous at the time and an attraction in her own right, so the race organizers invited her to pass in front of the grandstand several times. She disappointed some, however, by refusing to participate in a timed sprint, as she had and occasionally would in other cities.

But the Independent was generous about her refusal to run, saying that “nothing less than Earth” would be fine for Annie for a class. “She came to the podium after giving her exhibition,” reported the Independent, “and gave a short lecture, in which she recounted leaving Boston without a dime and paper baggage … she described her route around the world, recounted being present at one of the great Eastern battles [a reference to the Sino-Japanese War — Ed.] … “

Part of it was made up, because Annie was all about making good thread and captivating audiences. It’s fair to say that my new book on her, Turn, which is a work of historical fiction, is about a woman who wrote her own historical fiction in real time.

What do you hope readers will learn from your book?

Annie’s story tells us a lot about the 1890s, how cycling drastically changed women’s lives, the restricted lives women were supposed to live, the journalism of the time, the changes in communication and transportation technologies. the world a “smaller” place.

Although she was a flawed person whose decisions, especially her decision to disappear from the lives of her young children, were at times harsh and forgiving of herself, she was nonetheless a woman of boundless mood who strayed from the paths. beaten. And as the cliché says, wise women rarely make history.

She was an anonymous Jewish housewife and mother living in a Boston apartment building and very unhappy with her lot in life. By dint of daring and a vivid imagination, within 15 months, she had grown into a global celebrity albeit under an assumed name, Annie Londonderry, a name borrowed from the Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Co. of New Hampshire, the first of many advertisers who bought space on his bike and body. She took a new name and invented a whole new character, a quintessentially American thing to do.

See peterzheutlin.com.

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