Book: Just Me: The Life Story of a Nobody

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Published in 1938, this book is the memoir of a feisty grandmother born into extreme hardship in Victorian New Zealand.

Author Susan McKearney, born Susan Hooey in 1870, lived through wars, epidemics and depressions both economic and personal.  After enduring a violent, motherless childhood, she married labourer James ‘Sampson’ McKearney and bore seven children, two of whom died young.

Much has been written about these times, but relatively little from the perspective of a working-class woman on the front line.  She was expected to devote her life to her husband, her children and her chores.  She was not expected to publicise her unhappiness.  She wrote of inferiority, invisibility, a fear of aging and being taken for granted by her husband and family.

After the publication of her book, Susan McKearney was interviewed on national radio.  Because she was born here, the interview preserves an early New Zealand English accent with a strong Irish lilt.  The interview can be accessed in the main gallery of the Cambridge Museum.

This first edition publication of “Just Me” is bound in dark green.  Its fawn dustcover pictures Susan McKearney in a dark coat.  Her grim sidelong glance says it all.

 

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• Accession No: CM936
• Maker: Queen City Press
• Where: Auckland, New Zealand
• When: 1938
• Materials: Board, paper, thread
• Measurements: 19 x 13 x 3cm

 

Discover more:

James ‘Sampson’ McKearney https://cambridgemuseum.org.nz/arnold-charles-william

Difference and Inequality: Women and Men https://teara.govt.nz/en/women-and-men/page-1

Just Me https://www.amazon.com/Just-Me-Life-Story-Nobody-ebook/dp/B086RDJ99R