My First Thirty Years

Banned in 1925. Rediscovered nearly a century later. One woman’s fearless truth still demands to be heard.
In My First Thirty Years, Gertrude Beasley lays bare what others only dared to whisper. Raised in poverty and violence in early 20th-century Texas, Beasley refused silence. Her memoir—blunt, bold, and decades ahead of its time—was banned shortly after publication for its searing depictions of sexual abuse, class struggle, and a woman’s fight for bodily autonomy.
With unflinching prose and fierce clarity, Beasley dismantles the myths of the noble frontier and exposes the brutal reality many women endured. A teacher, journalist, and activist, she carved a life of resistance—only to vanish under mysterious circumstances.
Today, her voice roars back. This isn’t just a memoir. It’s a revolution in print.
Praise for My First Thirty Years: For almost a century in Texas literary circles, Gertrude Beasley’s 1925 memoir has been more a legend than a book… The tangled history of My First Thirty Years, and Beasley’s horrific personal fate, are case studies in society’s merciless treatment of women of her era who gave voice to socially unspeakable truths. The memoir’s republication this month, which makes it widely available for the first time in 96 years, is a long-overdue moment of reckoning. It’s also a rich gift to the Texas literary canon.
—Texas MonthlyWe should all be as fierce, loud, and convinced of our own self-worth as Gertrude Beasley was. This story of a justifiably angry woman living ahead of the world she lived in will resonate deeply today.
—Soraya Chemaly, activist and award-winning author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s AngerGertrude Beasley’s 1925 memoir grabs the reader by the arm and holds tight, speaking with a voice as compelling as if she had just put down her pen this morning. Feminist, socialist, and acute observer of both herself and the world around her, Beasley gives us stories that illuminate the costs of poverty and of being a woman. To read My First Thirty Years is to be in conversation with an extraordinary mind.
—Anne Gardiner Perkins, author of Yale Needs Women