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

March 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.

April 15, 2014
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.

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June 1, 2014
First and foremost, Molenaar has led an amazing life. To say that she traveled the wide world in pursuit of her photojournalism career would be an understatement. As Molenaar makes clear in this evocative autobiography, she immersed herself in every aspect of life's sights, smells, and sounds. Her record of these journeys is a testimony to both her endless curiosity and determination to learn as much as possible about the diverse countries and cultures that welcomed her explorations. Far more than just a travelogue, however, this is also the story of a Dutch childhood filled with brutal war and occupation, three marriages, motherhood, professional success, and a constant search for a place to call home. Molenaar is candid about her accidental forays into photography and the manner in which she fell into a career that found her on equal standing with men in the field. Far less political then readers may expect, Molenaar's reminiscences are witty, tender, and forthright. Like the great women travelers of previous eras, she is truly one of a kind.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)