In Chłopki. Opowieść o naszych babkach (Peasant Women: The Story of Our Grandmothers), Joanna Kuciel-Frydryszak continues her exploration of forgotten female voices, turning her gaze this time toward the women who remained behind in the Polish countryside while their sisters left for the cities. The result is a deeply human, often heartbreaking portrayal of rural womanhood: mothers, wives, laborers, and dreamers who endured poverty, backbreaking labor, and the rigid confines of a patriarchal world.
Kuciel-Frydryszak, already known for Służące do wszystkiego (Servants for All), gives these women what they were so long denied a voice. Through interviews, historical research, and fragments of diaries, she reconstructs lives lived in hardship yet sustained by endurance and quiet strength. The women she writes about prayed for a dowry, shared a single bed with their children, divided matches into quarters to save money, and often lived without education because “women didn’t need school.” And yet, they dreamed of owning shoes, of sending their children to class, of one day being called “lady.”
For many readers, this book is a revelation. It uncovers a hidden chapter of social history, one often omitted from official narratives. For others, particularly those who grew up close to this rural world, it feels like a mirror rather than a discovery. As reviewer emi notes, those who were raised on their grandmother’s stories of hunger, superstition, and relentless work may not find anything shocking here. What stands out to her instead is how the book, while important and well-researched, can at times feel repetitive and unfocused. She observes that Kuciel-Frydryszak sometimes circles around the same themes poverty, servitude, lack of education without clear structure or pacing, leading to sections that “pour water instead of deepening the point.”
Another reader, Tymciolina, echoes this sentiment, expressing disappointment at the book’s loose organization and occasional overreliance on anecdotal evidence. While she found the beginning and ending chapters weaker, she praises the middle sections, especially those enriched with authentic diary fragments and firsthand accounts. These passages, she says, are where Kuciel-Frydryszak’s work truly shines evoking the hunger, exhaustion, and small moments of hope that defined village life. The chapters on food scarcity and the unequal division of labor particularly resonated with her.
Yet, even with its structural flaws, Chłopki remains a powerful and necessary work. It is not a polished academic study but rather a living, breathing document of collective memory. Kuciel-Frydryszak captures not only the material realities of these women’s lives but also their spirit the stubbornness that kept them standing through wars, famine, and social inequality. Her prose, infused with empathy and restraint, invites readers to listen rather than pity.
What makes this book so meaningful is not only its historical insight but its moral urgency. By reclaiming the voices of rural women, Chłopki asks us to reconsider how history is written and who gets to be remembered. It challenges the reader to see these grandmothers not as nameless figures in old photographs but as complex individuals whose sacrifices made modern life possible.
Chłopki. Opowieść o naszych babkach may not be perfect in execution, but it is indispensable in purpose. It is a labor of love, a tribute to endurance, and a reminder that behind every story of progress stands a generation of women who worked in silence.
If you want to understand the roots of women’s resilience, the cost of survival, and the quiet heroism of ordinary lives, this book deserves a place on your shelf.
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