Ithaca Diaries, is a coming of age memoir set at Cornell University in the tumultuous 1960s. The story is told in first person from the point of view of a smart, sassy, funny, scared, sophisticated yet naïve college student who can laugh at herself while she and the world around her are having a nervous breakdown. Based on the author’s diaries and letters, interviews and other primary and secondary accounts of the time, Ithaca Diaries describes collegiate life as protests, politics, and violence increasingly engulf the student, her campus, and her nation. Her irreverent observations serve as a prism for understanding what it was like to live through those tumultuous times.
An official launch is slated for mid-January, 2015.
Broken Patterns, by award-winning journalist Anita M. Harris, traces the experiences of 40 American professional women who entered male-dominated careers in the 1970s and 1980s. Placing these groundbreaking women in generational context along with their mothers and grandmothers, the book outlines a “push-pull” pattern of historical development going back to the Colonial period in America.
The new (2nd) edition adds stories of present day college students and recent graduates, a new preface and an afterword assessing how far women have come since Broken Patterns was originally published, in 1995.
In the 19th century and again in the 20th, Harris writes, the more women left the home for paying work in one generation, the deeper the societal belief in domesticity for women in the next.
A “push-pull” pattern first became apparent when, to Harris’ surprise, women told her they chose their careers because they didn’t want to emulate their mothers, who were homemakers in the 1950s–but described grandmothers who had worked outside the home in the early 1900s.
In light of the struggles of today’s working women to balance careers and families, Harris asks, what does such a push-pull dynamic portend for the future?
Unlike several new books arguing that women’s quest for equality has stalled, Harris takes a hopeful view, suggesting that “progress is not linear, nor cyclic, but spiral.” As individuals and as a society, she writes, “we push forward toward a goal, reach an impasse, pull back to retrieve and reintegrate aspects and values of the past, building new frameworks in which to move forward, once again.”
The book will be of interest to all working women because it shows how their life decisions may be influenced—consciously or unconsciously—by mothers’ and grandmothers’ lives.
NPR Reporter and author Margot Adler calls the book ”A splendid study of professional women.”
Harris carried out her research as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and at the Henry A. Murray Center at Radcliffe College. Previously, she had reported on the “women’s issues” for Newsday and for the MacNeil/Lehrer Report (now the NewsHour) of national public television. She has taught at Harvard and Yale Universities, at Simmons College and in the MBA program at Babson College. Currently, she is managing director of the Harris Communications Group, in Cambridge, MA.
BROKEN PATTERNS PICKS UP WHERE LEAN IN LEAVES OFF…placing modern professional women, their mothers and their grandmothers, in a remarkable historical context. A must-read for anyone seeking insight into the history and psychology of professional women. Introducing the 2nd Edition, with a new preface and afterword by the author.
Today, women are entering professional careers in unprecedented numbers, and rising to the highest levels in corporations, academe, media and politics. But new books and studies suggest that the movement toward equality of men and women has stalled–in part because some women are opting for domestic–even subservient– roles. What does this mean for the future?
Broken Patterns tells the stories of 40 professional women who entered male-dominated careers in the 1970s and 80s. It places these groundbreaking women, and their mothers and grandmothers in historical context going back to the American Colonial Era. It shows that, in the 19th century and again in the 20th, the more women left the home for paying work in one generation, the greater the societal belief in domesticity for women, in the next.
First published in 1995, Broken Patterns traces the paths of the women interviewed and also professional women’s historic quest to express the qualities they deem “feminine”–yet also achieve equality with men. In the book, author Anita Harris lays out a vision of progress–whether historical, generational, personal or creative–that is not linear nor cyclic, but spiral.
In this spiral process, she writes, “driven by technologic, natural, societal or internal forces, we move forward toward new opportunities. We get just so far, then pull back to reintegrate images, ideas and experiences of the past—building a new basis on which to move forward, once again.”
The 2nd edition, published in 2014, includes interviews with current college women, as well as a new preface and an afterward showing how far women have come since Broken Patterns was first published in 1995.