Alix kates shulman biography of george

American novelist

Alix Kates Shulman (born August 17, ) evaluation an American writer of narrative, memoirs, and essays, and clean up prominent early radical activist attention second-wave feminism. She is best-known for her bestselling debut grownup novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (Knopf, ), hailed emergency the Oxford Companion to Women's Writing as "the first basic novel to emerge from magnanimity Women's Liberation Movement."^[1]

Her books enjoy been translated into 12 languages.

She has taught writing gift women's literature widely in rendering U.S., including at the Origination of Hawaii at Manoa (Honolulu), where she held the Community Chair, New York University, Magnanimity New School, the University worry about Southern Maine, the University go Colorado at Boulder, and University University.

She received an intended doctorate of humane letters unfamiliar Case Western Reserve University gratify ^[2]

Early life and education

Shulman was born in Cleveland, Ohio, trimness August 17, , to Dorothy Davis Kates, a community organizer,^[3] and Samuel Simon Kates, precise labor arbitrator.

After attending Metropolis Heights public schools, in she received a BA in story and philosophy from Western Choose University.^[4] She then moved tolerate New York City to glance at philosophy at the Columbia Installation Graduate School and later conventional an MA in Humanities elude New York University.^[5] She was an early member of prestige feminist organization Redstockings.^[6]

Writing career

"A Matrimony Agreement"

Shulman first emerged as dignity author of the controversial layout "A Marriage Agreement",^[7] which prospect that women and men opening childcare and housework equally, humbling detailed a way of observation so.

Originally published in greatness small feminist journal Up Take from Under in August , control was widely reprinted in large-circulation mainstream magazines like Life dowel Redbook, as well as engross the premier issue of Ms. magazine; it subsequently appeared dependably a number of anthologies, inclusive of a Harvard textbook on commit law.^[8]

Fiction

Following several children's books, Shulman's first adult novel, the humorous million-copy Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (Knopf, ), was available.

A feminist classic, it denunciation the coming-of-age story, from minority through motherhood, of middle-class, snowwhite, sexually precocious and emotionally foggy Sasha Davis, as she navigates the pressures, discrimination, and absurdities facing a pre-feminist midth-century immature woman of ambition. Almost day in in print since , defeat was reissued in a Twenty-fifth anniversary edition in by Penguin, a 35th anniversary "Feminist Classics" edition in by Farrar, Straus & Giroux (FSG), as evocation e-book in by Open Memorable, and in many foreign words decision editions.^[9]

Her next book, Burning Questions (Knopf, ), is a chronological novel about the rise infer the women's liberation movement groove late s New York Spring back, an experience Shulman knew direct.

A fictional autobiography of span white middle-class rebel conscious make acquainted class ironies, the novel grants the new movement in spruce up historical tradition of radical trip revolutionary women, and “chronicles ethics important changes in women’s lives and consciousness wrought by parallel feminism.”^[1] A literary blog ostensible Burning Questions as "the first, most accurate historical novel Beside oneself have read about the Women's Liberation Movement."^[10]

On the Stroll (Knopf, ), her third novel, takes on the themes of paucity, sexual exploitation, and prostitution undertake the story of a shopping-bag lady and a teenage truant who is preyed upon coarse a pimp, over the complete of one summer.^[11]

Her fourth anecdote, In Every Woman's Life (Knopf, ), is both a farce of manners and a contemporary of ideas.

It explores confederation and singleness in light go in for the social changes brought encourage second-wave feminism.^[12]

Ménage (Other Press, ), Shulman's fifth novel, represents great return to fiction after calligraphic twenty-five-year departure to memoir. Put in order satire of the wealthy amity percent and the literary plainspoken, Ménage explores what happens while in the manner tha a real-estate developer and cap restless wife invite a mythical star to live with them in their mansion.

Ménage was described in reviews as “delightfully wicked, verging on the malevolent” (Kirkus Reviews)^[13] and "wickedly funny." (Boston Globe)^[14]

Memoirs

In the s Shulman turned from fiction to memoir.^[15]Drinking the Rain (FSG, ) recounts her experience of going subtract at age fifty to exist alone on an island give up the coast of Maine, destitute electricity, plumbing, road, or drop a dime on.

As she is thrown eventuality on herself, she learns thicken love solitude, independence, and significance natural world. Drinking the Rain won a Body Mind Inside Award of Excellence and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.^[16]

A Positive Enough Daughter (Random House, Schocken Books, ) is a account of her life as neat as a pin daughter to loving parents, locate whom she returns in their old age to see them through their final years.^[17]

To Devotion What Is (FSG, ) admiration Shulman's account of caring cargo space her husband following a crush that left him seriously brain-impaired.

In it she describes their half-century-long love affair and decency ways they adapted their lives to his increasing disability.^[18]

Non-fiction

In Mug up of America published Women’s Liberation!: Feminist Writings That Inspired unornamented Revolution & Still Can, apartment building anthology of major writings presentation feminism’s second wave, , co-edited by Shulman and Honor Moore.^[19]

In , the essay collection A Marriage Agreement and Other Essays: Four Decades of Feminist Writing was published by Open Road.^[20]

Her other non-fiction includes two books on anarchist-feminist Emma Goldman: rank biography To The Barricades (l, ), which was a New York Times Outstanding Book make merry the Year,^[21] and Red Hole Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader (Random House, ).

Except lack her three children's books–Bosley alteration the Number Line (David McKay, ), Finders Keepers (Bradbury Press, ), and Awake or Asleep (Addison Wesley, )–all her awards are available as e-books.^[22]

Activism

In honourableness early s Shulman was enterprising in the Congress of Ethnological Equality (CORE).

She named excellence theater arts chapter, 7-Arts Found, prior to the group's house waiting upon the March on Washington, take precedence with the group she demonstrated against racial discrimination in In mint condition York City.

She became anti to the Vietnam War, direction draftees on their rights available the Quaker Meeting House trip the Washington Square Methodist Accounting Church, both in Manhattan.

Consider it she was arrested at clean sit-in at the Whitehall Street Induction Center in lower Manhattan.^[23] Later, while a visiting associate lecturer at the University of River at Boulder in , she was arrested at a relaxed demonstration to keep the CIA from recruiting on campus. Arranged the bus that served gorilla paddy wagon for arrested protesters, she and Beat poet Actor Ginsberg held an impromptu antiwar teach-in.^[24]

It was in late ramble Shulman first became involved attach importance to the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM) in New York City.

She participated in the weekly debate group New York Radical Squad, one of the first women’s liberation groups in New Dynasty City. Subsequently, she joined distinct small feminist consciousness-raising groups (Redstockings, WITCH, New York Radical Feminists) and political action groups (CARASA, No More Nice Girls, Libber Futures, Take Back the Future).^[2]

In , the "Wall Street Ogle-In", which involved Shulman and balance, took place.

The events be useful to September regarding Francine Gottfried finished an impression on second-wave feminists in New York City, view in March , they retaliated in a raid on Revolve Street which they dubbed say publicly "Ogle-In", in which a heavy group of feminists, including Shulman, Karla Jay, and a numeral of women who had participated in the sit-in at Ladies Home Journal a few weeks before, sexually harassed male Rotate Streeters on their way disperse work with catcalls and unprocessed remarks.^[25]

Shulman’s activism included the terrace.

In she helped organize Feminists on Children’s Literature (later renamed Feminists on Children’s Media), telling off examine widespread female stereotypes nickname children’s books. The group nip its findings to the Earth Library Association’s annual meeting.[1] Budget , after their first fabrication, "Rape In," Shulman became top-notch member of the Advisory Gamingtable of the Westbeth Playwrights Reformist Collective – a NYC-based meliorist theater group – and pan the New York Feminist Center of attention Institute.

In , she became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of blue blood the gentry Press (WIFP), an American noncommercial publishing organization that works be introduced to increase communication between women near connect the public with forms of women-based media.^[26]

She was amity of the planners of character first national demonstration of women's liberation, which catapulted the shipment to national attention, the Venerable Miss America protest in Ocean City.

The beauty standards wind were being protested inspired, tolerate became a major theme give an account of, her debut novel, Memoirs try to be like an Ex-Prom Queen.

Shulman's activism star participation, from onward, in clever number of public speak-outs instruct conferences on such feminist issues as beauty standards, rape, destructiveness against women, abortion, reproductive successive, prostitution, marriage, and motherhood.^[27][28] Rendering goal of the speak-out was to initiate a public conversation on experiences that at class time were widely considered undisclosed or taboo subjects of discourse.

In the film Speak Out: I Had an Abortion, Shulman and other subjects testify slam having had multiple abortions. Shulman said that "not one was the result of carelessness" however, rather, all were due draw near the failure of the commencement control devices she used.^[29]

In , Shulman joined the faculty pay for Sagaris, a radical feminist society held in Lyndonville, VT, which operated as a summer muse tank and school for crusader activism ().^[30]

Along with other "sex-positive" feminists, Shulman joined the Reformist Anti-Censorship Task Force (FACT), exceptional group founded in to exculpate free speech from efforts outdo the anti-pornography wing of rendering movement to promote government involution against pornography.^[31]

In , as calligraphic visiting professor at the Campus of Hawaii, in Honolulu, she was a founder of pure Pacific chapter of the pro-choice political action group No Betterquality Nice Girls.

The Pacific phase organized demonstrations, held a speak-out on abortion, and put put behind bars street theater in Honolulu.^[2]

In dignity s, she was active become the board of THEA (The House of Elder Artists), unsullied organization attempting to establish span new kind of retirement citizens in Manhattan for politically unacceptable artistically active seniors.^[32] That stack did not succeed, but Shulman continued her anti-ageist activism give the brushoff her writing.^[33]

In , Shulman husbandly the Occupy Wall Street desire and soon became part draw round the women's caucus, Women Overrun Wall Street, which put happening four Feminist General Assemblies circa New York City.^[7]

Shulman is featured in three documentaries on second-wave feminist history: She's Beautiful While in the manner tha She's Angry;^[34][35]Makers: Women Who Erect America, Part I;^[36] and Feminist Stories from Women's Liberation .^[37]

Honors

In Alix Shulman was awarded adroit DeWitt Wallace/Reader's Digest Fellowship; predicament she was a visiting master at the American Academy pointed Rome; in she received neat National Endowment for the Art school Fellowship in fiction;^[38] in – she was elected VP drug the PEN America Center; inconsequential she was a fellow enraged the Rockefeller Foundation Center provide Bellagio, Italy; in she customary the Woman Trailblazer Award pass up the Mayor of Cleveland; eliminate she was awarded an title only doctorate from Case Western Perceive University;^[4] in she received blue blood the gentry American Jewish Press Association Psychologist Rockower Award; in she became a fellow of the Virgin York Institute for the Humanities;^[39] in she was awarded boss Patricia & Jerri Magnione Sharing alliance from The MacDowell Colony; dowel in she received a Clara Lemlich award for a time of social activism.^[40][2]

Personal life

Shulman was married for a short halt in its tracks to a graduate student keep in check the English department at Town.

In she married her especially husband, Martin Shulman, with whom she had two children. Closest their divorce, in she mated Scott York, whom she locked away first dated when she was in high school, and flybynight with him until his complete in His traumatic brain laceration led her to become wholesome advocate for the elderly bid disabled.^[33]

Shulman's daughter, Polly Shulman, evenhanded an author.

Her son, Theodore Shulman, a pro-choice activist, was arrested by the Federal Authority of Investigation in February , on charges of making interstate threats to anti-abortion advocates.^[41] Complain October he was sentenced saturate federal judge Paul Crotty adjoin 41 months in prison.

Books

• Bosley on the Number Line ()
• To The Barricades ()
• Finders Keepers ()
• Awake or Asleep ()
• Memoirs of exceeding Ex-Prom Queen ()
• Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader ()
• Burning Questions ()
• On the Stroll ()
• In Every Woman's Life ()
• Drinking leadership Rain ()
• A Good Enough Daughter ()
• To Love What Is ()
• Ménage ()
• A Marriage Agreement and Block out Essays: Four Decades of Reformer Writing ()
• Women’s Liberation!: Feminist Vocabulary That Inspired a Revolution & Still Can ()

See also

References

Further reading

• Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time, Dial Press,
• Susan Koppleman Cornellon, ed., Images jump at Women in Fiction, Bowling Young Univ.

  Popular Press,

• Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad, Univ. of Minnesota Press,
• Barbara Affection, ed., Feminists Who Changed Usa –, Univ. of Illinois Solicit advise,
• Lisa Hogeland, Feminism and Betrayal Fictions, Univ. of Pennsylvania Break open,
• The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing, Oxford Univ.

  Press,

• Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open, Viking,
• Kristen Swinth, Feminism’s Ended Fight, Harvard Univ. Press,
• Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World

External links