Primates of Park Avenue : a memoir

Resource Information

The work Primates of Park Avenue : a memoir represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Menasha Public Library (Elisha D. Smith). This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Primates of Park Avenue : a memoir

Title remainder

a memoir

Statement of responsibility

Wednesday Martin, Ph.D

Creator

• Martin, Wednesday

Subject

• Martin, Wednesday
• Mothers -- New York (State) | New York -- Biography
• Mothers -- New York (State) | New York -- Social life and customs
• New York (N.Y.) -- Biography
• New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs
• Interpersonal relations -- New York (State) | New York
• Upper East Side (New York, N.Y.) -- Biography
• Upper East Side (New York, N.Y.) -- Social life and customs
• Primates -- Behavior -- Miscellanea

Genre

• Miscellanea
• Biography

Language

eng

Summary

"Like an urban Dian Fossey, Wednesday Martin decodes the primate social behaviors of Upper East Side mothers in a brilliantly original and witty memoir about her adventures assimilating into that most secretive and elite tribe. After marrying a man from the Upper East Side and moving to the neighborhood, Wednesday Martin struggled to fit in. Drawing on her background in anthropology and primatology, she tried looking at her new world through that lens, and suddenly things fell into place. She understood the other mothers' snobbiness at school drop-off when she compared them to olive baboons. Her obsessional quest for a Hermes Birkin handbag made sense when she realized other females wielded them to establish dominance in their troop. And so she analyzed tribal migration patterns; display rituals; physical adornment, mutilation, and mating practices; extra-pair copulation; and more. Her conclusions are smart, thought-provoking, and hilariously unexpected. Every city has its Upper East Side, and in Wednesday's memoir, readers everywhere will recognize the strange cultural codes of powerful social hierarchies and the compelling desire to climb them. They will also see that Upper East Side mothers want the same things for their children that all mothers want--safety, happiness, and success--and not even sky-high penthouses and chauffeured SUVs can protect this ecologically released tribe from the universal experiences of anxiety and loss. When Wednesday's life turns upside down, she learns how deep the bonds of female friendship really are. Intelligent, funny, and heartfelt, Primates of Park Avenue lifts a veil on a secret, elite world within a world--the exotic, fascinating, and strangely familiar culture of privileged Manhattan motherhood"--

Assigning source

Provided by publisher

Biography type

autobiography

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

974.7/1

Index

no index present

LC call number

F128.68.U63

LC item number

M37 2015

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography