Cheap Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities (Book) (Alexandra Robbins) Price

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Customer Reviews of Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities

Interesting Analysis of Greek Life
Robbins undertakes a complex investigative project in Pledges: The Secret Life of Sororities. The book gives an equal amount of historical information with accounts of sorority women. While the stories do seem to be out of a 90210 episode, the inside look at the lives, experiences, and rituals of the Greek system is intriguing. This is a interesting work of non-fiction and is written fairly well. It is an easy, fast read, and skims to surface about African-American Greek life, societal impact, and other deeper topics. If you are interested in the interior lives of sorority houses, this book hits its target. Robbins also has a website where the lives chronicled in the book are continued.

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Not true
While Ms. Robbins makes several excellent points in her book, I feel that she could have done more research. To truly write a thorough, objective viewpoint, she should have shadowed several sororities. Not just two. She selected a college in a part of the country where a lot of students come from particularly wealthy families. She selected sororities who have rather large chapters and houses on campus and there are more than just a few sororities on campus. Perhaps if she had gone to a smaller college where the fraternities and sororities do NOT have houses, she would have seen something totally different. Not every sorority girl walks around with a Fendi bag and Juicy Courture jeans covering their rear. I'd never even heard of Fendi and I'm a sister of a huge national sorority. Homemade canvas letter bags are a favorite of we Alpha Gams. And Target clothes are what we wear! We're not poor. We work hard for what we have. Not ALL of our moms and dads throw money at us left and right. Many of us have part time or full time jobs. We do two huge philanthropy projects per school year. We have the HIGHEST g.p.a on campus and grades are essential to us. Getting an education was our reason for coming to UWF, and our Scholarship Chair never lets us forget that. She's always praising us for doing well, and encouraging the strugglers. Our sisterhood is strong and we would do anything for each other.
The Greek system varies from campus to campus and she only saw with her own two eyes, two sororities on ONE campus. Everything else was hearsay. I really enjoyed the book, but I would like to have seen her do more research to develop a more educated viewpoint on sororities.

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bleh
As a smart sorority woman I was stoked to read this book as a sort of outside look at who we are. It had potential but overall reading it was waste of time. There a few major problems with the book:

1) The characters are one-dimensional, boring, undeveloped and I was NEVER able to relate to them. (And I SHOULD be able to relate as well as anyone since I AM a sorority woman)

2) Robbins overgeneralizes and exaggerates throughout the book. The "experiences" of these girls only slighty resembles my experience (note: I go to school at University that has one of the strongest greek systems on the West Coast)

3) Robbins really loses it at the end with her "recommendations." She should stop preaching and write a good book.

4) While the "secrets" chapter was the most interesting and juicy I found it disrespectful to reveal this kind of thing in a book AND Robbins got a bunch of them wrong. She only got my chapter's secrets right and was completly wrong on the sorority my best friend is in

Overall Robbins is just not a good writer. This book is neither good journalism nor good fiction (good fiction shouldn't bore me to tears).

Overall, if you want a trashy book to skim through pick this up. If you want the truth about sororities or to be entertained don't bother