Alice: Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute
About this audiobook
The collected memoirs of a 1913 San Francisco sex worker, their effect on society at the time, and where they fit in today’s world
In 1913 the San Francisco Bulletin published a serialized, ghostwritten memoir of a prostitute who went by Alice Smith. “A Voice from the Underworld” detailed Alice’s humble Midwestern upbringing and her struggle to find aboveboard work, and candidly related the harrowing events she endured after entering “the life.”
While prostitute narratives had been published before, never had they been as frank in their discussion of the underworld, including topics such as abortion, police corruption, and the unwritten laws of the brothel. Throughout the series, Alice strongly criticized the society that failed her and so many other women, but, just as acutely, she longed to be welcomed back from the margins. The response to Alice’s story was unprecedented: four thousand letters poured into the Bulletin, many of which were written by other prostitutes ready to share their own stories; and it inspired what may have been the first sex worker rights protest in modern history.
An introduction contextualizes “A Voice from the Underworld” amid Progressive Era sensationalistic journalism and shifting ideas of gender roles, and reveals themes in Alice’s story that extend to issues facing sex workers today.
About the author
Ivy Anderson is a San Francisco–based writer who focuses on issues of ecology and radical history. Her reportage on water management issues was published in Water Efficiency magazine and and her poetry in Poecology. She holds a BA in environmental studies with a minor in geography, runs a community garden, and is on the board of a bookstore collective in San Francisco.
Devon Angus is an artist, activist, and historian based in San Francisco. He composed and performed a conceptual folk operetta based on San Francisco history, The Ghosts of Barbary, throughout the Bay Area, Switzerland, and Italy. He organized and published a series of oral histories of immigrants in the Catskills region, and was the recipient of an arts grant through the New York State Council on the Arts for his show Songs and Stories of Old New York. Angus is currently pursuing a history MA at San Francisco State University.
Marguerite Gavin has recorded over three hundred audiobooks in numerous genres. Her work has won AudioFile Earphones and Publishers Weekly Listen-Up awards as well as a nomination for the prestigious Audie award. AudioFile magazine says "Marguerite Gavin is an accomplished storyteller... with a sonorous voice, rich and full of emotion, she easily delivers wry humor and moves smoothly from accent to accent, recalling multiple characters perfectly." Gavin divides her time as an actress between the sound studio and classical theater. She lives in the Washington, DC area.
