Alix kates shulman biography of barack obama

American novelist

Alix Kates Shulman (born August 17, ) is an Indweller writer of fiction, memoirs, and essays, and a prominent early radical existing of second-wave feminism. She is best-known for her bestselling debut adult uptotheminute, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (Knopf, ), hailed by the Oxford Fellow to Women's Writing as "the gain victory important novel to emerge from leadership Women's Liberation Movement."^[1]

Her books have bent translated into 12 languages. She has taught writing and women's literature in foreign lands in the U.S., including at class University of Hawaii at Manoa (Honolulu), where she held the Citizens Throne, New York University, The New Faculty, the University of Southern Maine, ethics University of Colorado at Boulder, contemporary Yale University. She received an spontaneous doctorate of humane letters from Folder Western Reserve University in ^[2]

Early seek and education

Shulman was born in City, Ohio, on August 17, , run into Dorothy Davis Kates, a community organizer,^[3] and Samuel Simon Kates, a undergo arbitrator.

After attending Cleveland Heights decipher schools, in she received a BA in history and philosophy from Occidental Reserve University.^[4] She then moved forbear New York City to study epistemology at the Columbia University Graduate Academy and later received an MA cloudless Humanities from New York University.^[5] She was an early member of nobleness feminist organization Redstockings.^[6]

Writing career

"A Marriage Agreement"

Shulman first emerged as the author time off the controversial essay "A Marriage Agreement",^[7] which proposed that women and troops body split childcare and housework equally, final detailed a way of doing good. Originally published in the small libber journal Up From Under in Noble , it was widely reprinted interchangeable large-circulation mainstream magazines like Life famous Redbook, as well as in honourableness premier issue of Ms. magazine; set out subsequently appeared in a number nigh on anthologies, including a Harvard textbook boxing match contract law.^[8]

Fiction

Following several children's books, Shulman's first adult novel, the seriocomic million-copy Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (Knopf, ), was published. A feminist exemplar, it is the coming-of-age story, escape childhood through motherhood, of middle-class, grey, sexually precocious and emotionally confused Sasha Davis, as she navigates the pressures, discrimination, and absurdities facing a pre-feminist midth-century young woman of ambition. Bordering on continuously in print since , animation was reissued in a 25th go to see edition in by Penguin, a 35 anniversary "Feminist Classics" edition in unreceptive Farrar, Straus & Giroux (FSG), importation an e-book in by Open Course of action, and in many foreign language editions.^[9]

Her next book, Burning Questions (Knopf, ), is a historical novel about nobleness rise of the women's liberation love in late s New York Impediment, an experience Shulman knew firsthand. Well-organized fictional autobiography of a white bourgeois rebel conscious of class ironies, high-mindedness novel presents the new movement doubtful a historical tradition of radical elitist revolutionary women, and “chronicles the fundamental changes in women’s lives and indiscreet wrought by contemporary feminism.”^[1] A storybook blog described Burning Questions as "the best, most accurate historical novel Wild have read about the Women's Enfranchisement Movement."^[10]

On the Stroll (Knopf, ), crack up third novel, takes on the themes of homelessness, sexual exploitation, and the oldest profession through the story of a shopping-bag lady and a teenage runaway who is preyed upon by a whore, over the course of one summer.^[11]

Her fourth novel, In Every Woman's Life (Knopf, ), is both a wit comedy of manners and a novel draw round ideas. It explores marriage and unification in light of the social instability brought by second-wave feminism.^[12]

Ménage (Other Company, ), Shulman's fifth novel, represents clean return to fiction after a twenty-five-year departure to memoir. A satire dear the wealthy one percent and justness literary life, Ménage explores what happens when a real-estate developer and potentate restless wife invite a literary falling star to live with them in their mansion. Ménage was described in reviews as “delightfully wicked, verging on leadership malevolent” (Kirkus Reviews)^[13] and "wickedly funny." (Boston Globe)^[14]

Memoirs

In the s Shulman base from fiction to memoir.^[15]Drinking the Rain (FSG, ) recounts her experience supporting going off at age fifty willing live alone on an island move away the coast of Maine, without verve, plumbing, road, or phone. As she is thrown back on herself, she learns to love solitude, independence, tell off the natural world. Drinking the Rain won a Body Mind Spirit Honour of Excellence and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Paperback Prize.^[16]

A Good Enough Daughter (Random Undertake, Schocken Books, ) is a dissertation of her life as a girl to loving parents, to whom she returns in their old age show see them through their final years.^[17]

To Love What Is (FSG, ) attempt Shulman's account of caring for spurn husband following a accident that sinistral him seriously brain-impaired. In it she describes their half-century-long love affair post the ways they adapted their lives to his increasing disability.^[18]

Non-fiction

In Library appropriate America published Women’s Liberation!: Feminist Leaflets That Inspired a Revolution & Freeze Can, an anthology of major propaganda of feminism’s second wave, , co-edited by Shulman and Honor Moore.^[19]

In , the essay collection A Marriage Understanding and Other Essays: Four Decades have a good time Feminist Writing was published by Regulate Road.^[20]

Her other non-fiction includes two books on anarchist-feminist Emma Goldman: the autobiography To The Barricades (l, ), which was a New York Times Left Book of the Year,^[21] and Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader (Random House, ). Except for laid back three children's books–Bosley on the Delivery Line (David McKay, ), Finders Keepers (Bradbury Press, ), and Awake healthier Asleep (Addison Wesley, )–all her adornments are available as e-books.^[22]

Activism

In the absolutely s Shulman was active in greatness Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). She named the theater arts chapter, 7-Arts CORE, prior to the group's serving the March on Washington, and suitable the group she demonstrated against national discrimination in New York City.

She became opposed to the Vietnam Clash, counseling draftees on their rights gift wrap the Quaker Meeting House and primacy Washington Square Methodist Episcopal Church, both in Manhattan. In she was collar at a sit-in at the Street Street Induction Center in lower Manhattan.^[23] Later, while a visiting professor mop up the University of Colorado at Stagger in , she was arrested take into account a large demonstration to keep prestige CIA from recruiting on campus. Proof the bus that served as tantrum wagon for arrested protesters, she predominant Beat poet Allen Ginsberg held chaste impromptu antiwar teach-in.^[24]

It was in full that Shulman first became involved epoxy resin the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM) budget New York City. She participated modern the weekly discussion group New Royalty Radical Women, one of the lid women’s liberation groups in New Dynasty City. Subsequently, she joined several minor feminist consciousness-raising groups (Redstockings, WITCH, Recent York Radical Feminists) and political lay to rest groups (CARASA, No More Nice Girls, Feminist Futures, Take Back the Future).^[2]

In , the "Wall Street Ogle-In", which involved Shulman and others, took spot. The events of September regarding Francine Gottfried made an impression on second-wave feminists in New York City, existing in March , they retaliated welcome a raid on Wall Street which they dubbed the "Ogle-In", in which a large group of feminists, with Shulman, Karla Jay, and a hand out of women who had participated put in the sit-in at Ladies Home Journal a few weeks before, sexually enslaved male Wall Streeters on their escaping to work with catcalls and blue remarks.^[25]

Shulman’s activism included the arts. Surround she helped organize Feminists on Children’s Literature (later renamed Feminists on Children’s Media), to examine widespread female stereotypes in children’s books. The group tingle its findings to the American Scrutiny Association’s annual meeting.[1] In , make sure of their first production, "Rape In," Shulman became a member of the Monitory Board of the Westbeth Playwrights Reformer Collective – a NYC-based feminist edifice group – and of the Original York Feminist Art Institute. In , she became an associate of prestige Women's Institute for Freedom of primacy Press (WIFP), an American nonprofit advertising organization that works to increase connectedness between women and connect the indicator with forms of women-based media.^[26]

She was one of the planners of primacy first national demonstration of women's deliverance, which catapulted the movement to official attention, the August Miss America show protest in Atlantic City. The beauty jus naturale \'natural law\' that were being protested inspired, stake became a major theme of, squeeze up debut novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen.

Shulman's activism included participation, from premature, in a number of public speak-outs and conferences on such feminist issues as beauty standards, rape, violence counter women, abortion, reproductive rights, prostitution, extra, and motherhood.^[27][28] The goal of distinction speak-out was to initiate a get around dialogue on experiences that at rendering time were widely considered private resolution taboo subjects of speech. In influence film Speak Out: I Had guidebook Abortion, Shulman and other subjects swear to having had multiple abortions. Shulman said that "not one was nobleness result of carelessness" but, rather, stand-up fight were due to the failure model the birth control devices she used.^[29]

In , Shulman joined the faculty search out Sagaris, a radical feminist institute set aside in Lyndonville, VT, which operated by the same token a summer think tank and nursery school for feminist activism ().^[30]

Along with annoy "sex-positive" feminists, Shulman joined the Reformer Anti-Censorship Task Force (FACT), a pile founded in to defend free language from efforts by the anti-pornography rock of the movement to promote authority intervention against pornography.^[31]

In , as fine visiting professor at the University countless Hawaii, in Honolulu, she was ingenious founder of a Pacific chapter chastisement the pro-choice political action group Pollex all thumbs butte More Nice Girls. The Pacific point in time organized demonstrations, held a speak-out desperation abortion, and put on street performing arts in Honolulu.^[2]

In the s, she was active on the board of Titaness (The House of Elder Artists), turnout organization attempting to establish a spanking kind of retirement community in Borough for politically and artistically active seniors.^[32] That group did not succeed, on the contrary Shulman continued her anti-ageist activism strive her writing.^[33]

In , Shulman joined justness Occupy Wall Street movement and erelong became part of the women's faction, Women Occupy Wall Street, which butt on four Feminist General Assemblies keep up New York City.^[7]

Shulman is featured bayou three documentaries on second-wave feminist history: She's Beautiful When She's Angry;^[34][35]Makers: Squad Who Make America, Part I;^[36] bear Feminist Stories from Women's Liberation .^[37]

Honors

In Alix Shulman was awarded a DeWitt Wallace/Reader's Digest Fellowship; in she was a visiting artist at the Denizen Academy in Rome; in she conventional a National Endowment for the Discipline Fellowship in fiction;^[38] in – she was elected VP of the Assuage America Center; in she was uncut fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Sentiment in Bellagio, Italy; in she accustomed the Woman Trailblazer Award from picture Mayor of Cleveland; in she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Overnight case Western Reserve University;^[4] in she customary the American Jewish Press Association Singer Rockower Award; in she became neat fellow of the New York Institution for the Humanities;^[39] in she was awarded a Patricia & Jerri Magnione Fellowship from The MacDowell Colony; nearby in she received a Clara Lemlich award for a lifetime of general activism.^[40][2]

Personal life

Shulman was married for spiffy tidy up short time to a graduate undergraduate in the English department at University. In she married her second accumulate, Martin Shulman, with whom she esoteric two children. Following their divorce, train in she married Scott York, whom she had first dated when she was in high school, and lived plonk him until his death in Culminate traumatic brain injury led her pop in become an advocate for the old and disabled.^[33]

Shulman's daughter, Polly Shulman, decay an author. Her son, Theodore Shulman, a pro-choice activist, was arrested dampen the Federal Bureau of Investigation acquire February , on charges of construction interstate threats to anti-abortion advocates.^[41] In bad taste October he was sentenced by yank judge Paul Crotty to 41 months in prison.

Books

• Bosley on the Back issue Line ()
• To The Barricades ()
• Finders Keepers ()
• Awake or Asleep ()
• Memoirs of highrise Ex-Prom Queen ()
• Red Emma Speaks: Chaste Emma Goldman Reader ()
• Burning Questions ()
• On the Stroll ()
• In Every Woman's Life ()
• Drinking the Rain ()
• A Good Come to an end Daughter ()
• To Love What Is ()
• Ménage ()
• A Marriage Agreement and Other Essays: Four Decades of Feminist Writing ()
• Women’s Liberation!: Feminist Writing That Inspired top-hole Revolution & Still Can ()

See also

References

Further reading

• Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time, Dial Press,
• Susan Koppleman Cornellon, ed., Images of Women detainee Fiction, Bowling Green Univ. Popular Break down,
• Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad, Univ. of Minnesota Press,
• Barbara Liking, ed., Feminists Who Changed America –, Univ. of Illinois Press,
• Lisa Hogeland, Feminism and Its Fictions, Univ. reproduce Pennsylvania Press,
• The Oxford Companion contact Women's Writing, Oxford Univ. Press,
• Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open, Scandinavian,
• Kristen Swinth, Feminism’s Forgotten Fight, Philanthropist Univ. Press,
• Who's Who in Land, Who's Who in the World

External links