Saturday's Child (89 page)
Authors: Robin Morgan
women's activism:
ageism and,
285â86
in Fifties sociocultural milieu,
91â92
in literary tradition,
186
name changes and,
280â81
New Left sexism and,
233â36
,
237â38
,
239
,
240
,
241â12
,
245â46
,
254
,
289
and “the personal is political,”
253â56
unpaid labor and,
439
violence and,
401
,
425
,
439
;
see also
battery; pornography; poverty; prostitution; rape; etc.
in workplace,
290
see also
feminism
women's movement:
activist organizations in,
257â59
,
300â301
beauty pageants protested by,
259â63
development of,
262â66
factionalism and personal conflicts within,
282â83
,
301
,
304â5
,
314â17
,
319â20
,
325
government surveillance on,
243
,
244â45
international,
339â48
,
375
,
387â91
,
405â16
,
420â25
,
463
lesbian activism in,
263â64
,
302
media coverage of,
261â62
,
279â80
,
293
n
,
297â99
reform vs. radical activism in,
263â66
see also
feminism
Women's Studies Quarterly
,
463
Women's Tennis Association,
27
Wood, Ira,
236
Wood, Natalie,
27
Wood, Peggy,
50
,
59
,
63
,
64
,
66â67
,
68
,
71
,
86
,
96â99
,
100
Woodward, Joanne,
80
Woolf, Leonard,
220
Woolf, Virginia,
103â4
,
129
,
220
,
349
,
473â74
Word of a Woman, The
(Morgan),
228
,
235
n
,
259
,
277
n
,
289
n
,
307
n
,
404
n
,
406
,
429
,
437
,
450
,
472
n
Wyman, Jane,
33
Xhosa activism,
468
Yearling, The
,
33
Yeats, William Butler,
117
,
142
,
187
,
242
,
334
,
486
Young Lords,
239
Youth International Party (YIP),
237
,
245
,
258
Zulu women,
420â23
Zwelithini, King Goodwill,
420
n
Acknowledgments
This is a brave bookâwhich is not to imply that its author is courageous. On the contrary,
Saturday's Child
got itself written despite quite a few obstacles, including my own resistances to writing it. This is the first book of mine that was not my own idea (and the last). Mary Cunnane, my previous editor at W. W. Norton, urged me years ago to do a memoir, believing that the somewhat bizarre life I've led would make for fascinating reading. I declined. There were other books I was working on, and still others I had planned. Furthermore, I felt that memoir writing as a genre had in contemporary times largely declined to an exercise in self-promotion by people who are not now, never have been, and never will be
writers
. Over the years Mary wore me down. Then, once I finally began the book, she blithely quit New York publishing and moved to Australia, reconstituting herself as a literary agent. As her friend I wished her well. As her author I wished a koala bear would tumble from a eucalyptus tree onto her head. Now, having completed the book, I thank her for the idea and for her pursuit of it. This is all her fault.
Fortune has blessed me with my current editor, Angela von der Lippe, whose dedication to literary excellence is equaled by a subtle sense of humor and a sophisticated grasp of politics. It's rare to find any editor whose sensibility you can trust with poetry as well as both fiction and nonfiction prose; Angela is such a one. I'm grateful for her editing and her friendship.
The members of the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, and my friends Jessica Neuwirth and Pamela Shifman of Equality Now, deserve special acknowledgment for having given me the excuse to interrupt this book at every possible opportunity because of some crisis in the national or international Women's Movement. Without the aid of these activists, I'd have missed a bit of fun and the manuscript would have been finished eight months earlier.
Thanks also are due to certain people without whose help the memoir would never have been finished at all.
In 1997, while a visiting scholar at the University of Denver for three months, I had all the files for the bookâincluding old journals, clipping files, scrapbooks, and early chapter draftsâshipped to Colorado in a huge carton via Federal Express: I planned to work on the memoir between teaching duties and political-organizing shenanigans. FedEx
lost
the carton. This is a writer's nightmare. Almost a year and a half later, some of the contents were finally located, fire- and water-damaged, in one of FedEx's “Overgoods Centers”âa euphemism for what I learned are its many enormous warehouses crammed with packages it has misplaced. During the intervening months, my murderous impulses were kept in check by my attorney, Loni Adler, whose innovative legal maneuvers to get FedEx's attention were matched only by her refusal to give up. Watching this five-foot-tall woman confront the arrogant corporate power of Federal Express would have been a treat even if we hadn't won, which we did.
I'm also grateful to various friends who lent me their recollections. Somewhere in your fifties, you come to rely increasingly on collective memory: it can take five intelligent women at dinner fifteen minutes of working in tandem to piece together a single nameâwhich then bursts out in a hallelujah of communal triumph. In this regard, appreciation is due to the usual suspects, the friends who've been there for me and for my work over the years, especially Andrea Dworkin, Theresa Funiciello,
Edite Kroll, Suzanne Braun Levine, Isel Rivero, Lois Sasson, and Gloria Steinem, all of whom let me “interview” them regarding periods in our interwoven lives. Mary Thom and Joanne Edgar were generous with specifics of our mutual years at
Ms
., and Susan Brownmiller was helpful jogging my recollections about portions of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It's impossible to interview oneself, but I recalled how perceptive Maria Nadotti's questions had been in the taped book-length interview she'd done with me in 1995 (published in Italian as
Cassandra non abita più qui: Maria Nadotti intervista Robin Morgan
, by La Tartaruga edizioni, in Milan, 1996); her questions had addressed certain aspects of my life I'd not engaged before, and had elicited startling answers. So I'm thankful that Maria, with the help of her sons Paolo and Emiliano Benzi and the transcriber Diana Cook-Turano, went to some lengths to track down the long-lost original English-language transcript of the interview; it served this memoir well.
In the category of General Survival, appreciation is due to Jacqueline Lapa for her valuable advice during the early 1980s, and particularly to Carol Drexler, whose compassionate, wise counsel was of such importance during the bleak period described in Chapter 18. Deborah Ann Light's friendship and support continue to be expressed in multiple ways warranting multiple celebratory gratitudes. Alida Brill has lovingly offered a wide repertoire of sustenance, including taking time from her own writing to read parts of this manuscript.
Blake Morgan has done pretty much all of the above, while juggling the tribulations of his own life, writing terrific songs, and making me laugh. Those are only four of the thirteen hundred reasons this book is dedicated to him.
As for literary influences, I owe thanks to Wallace Stevens and Luigi Pirandello for, respectively, the poem and play that inspired the titles and formats of this book's Prologue and Epilogue. I'm also indebted to myself. For decades, earlier me's have drafted my experiences as subject matter into the service of (hopefully good) writing and politics. Writers do this sort of thing. But having already exposed so many aspects of my lifeâin poetry, fiction, and nonfictionâmade the writing of this memoir both more difficult and easier. The difficulty involved refusing merely to repeat myself but trying to dig deeper beneath material I had previously used in
order to reach what I hadn't dared approach before. In some cases, though, if a specific experience had already been depicted as well and fully as it ever would be, it was easier and more honest to resort to plagiarism. (After all, if you can't steal from yourself, whom
can
you steal from?) I wouldn't want some future doctoral candidates to think they'd stumbled across a scandal in spying a similarity now and then, so let me say that I've here recycled certain phrases or the occasional paragraph from earlier books of mine, as well as reclaimed certain incidents previously rendered. Reality in this case tells a better story than invention.
It's been quite a challenge, finding a style capable of carrying off the truth.
Robin Morgan
April 2000
New York City
About the Author
Award-winning poet, novelist, journalist, and feminist leader Robin Morgan has published more than twenty books, including the now-classic anthologies
Sisterhood Is Powerful
and
Sisterhood Is Global
and the bestselling
The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism
. Her work has been translated into thirteen languages, among them Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Persian. A recipient of honors including a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, and former editor in chief of
Ms
., Morgan founded the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, and with Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem, cofounded the Women's Media Center. She writes and hosts
Women's Media Center Live with Robin Morgan
, a weekly program with a global audience on iTunes and
WMCLive.com
âher commentaries legendary, her guests ranging from grassroots activists to Christiane Amanpour, Anita Hill, and President Jimmy Carter.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 2001 by Robin Morgan
Cover design by Mauricio Diaz
ISBN: 978-1-4976-7808-8
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
EBOOKS BY ROBIN MORGAN
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
