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Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Have Shaped Our Times

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Particular Passions is a wonderful choice for anyone interested in the women's movement and some of the women who made history during that heady time, amongst them Louise Nevelson, Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan. Particular Passions could easily be a primary source text for Women's studies and history students, but it is much more than a compendium of dry historical facts, it is mostly a very good read. The interviews allow these women to speak in their own voices, a technique that makes the book engaging and direct. Each story is unique, but there are common elements to all; certainly each woman ends up with a particular passion, whether it is art, books, medicine or law, but the journey is never easy. Discrimination prevented Nobel Prize winning scientist Rosalind Yalow from receiving a fellowship to medical school. Gotham Book Mart founder Frances Steloff held on to her love of books, and came to her vocation despite a Dickensian childhood of poverty and abuse. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of only 9 women in a class of 500 when she started law school. Some had the support and love of their families, others did not, but what comes through in all of these stories is that these women start with the gifts of talent, intellectual or creative, drive, and the desire to succeed. They believed in themselves even when the society they lived in didn't support that belief. Early in their lives that belief was reinforced by someone who confirmed their own sense of uniqueness. The women's movement created a more open setting for them to succeed, but these profiles convince me that these women would have succeeded in any era.

Imagine hearing forty-six women, who have made critical contributions to American society, whether in the arts, science, law, civil rights or business, reveal the secrets of their lives and their success. This is what you will find in Particular Passions. Each woman describes how she came to her "particular passion." Complimenting these wonderful stories are the extraordinary photographs by Lynn Gilbert, who accomplishes exactly what she set out to do--to capture the essence of each woman.

The book is unique because of its format: transcribed interviews, based on stories elicited by Lyn Gilbert, then expanded and beautifully edited by Gaylen Moore, so that we hear these women's voices, as if they were dear friends, sitting across from us, talking candidly about their lives. Some of the women, like Betty Friedan or Julia Child or Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Billie Jean King are extremely famous, but the interviews are uniformly interesting.

What comes through in so many of these interviews is how many different elements went into these women's particular passions--supportive parents--intelligence--certainly a degree of stubbornness and determination--but also luck. Each interview is filled with wonderful personal and professional anecdotes.
We get to hear first hand the passion that drives each of these women. Here's Rosalyn Yalow, who received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1977. "People come to see me and they say "don't you have any hobbies?" I say, "What hobbies?" What am I going to do? Ride a horse? Play tennis? This (her work in the laboratory) is where the excitement is." Or Billie Jean King who says, "People who love their work keep going back for more. The public doesn't understand that. They keep asking, "Well, why do you keep playing? You have enough money, you've won everything you ever wanted to...Well, because I like it. It's in my blood; it's a part of me."
We also get to experience the difficulties these women had to overcome, whether because of their gender or race or because of personal tragedies. We witness the determination required to overcome these difficulties.

Many of these women entered fields that were traditionally reserved for men. Helen B. Taussig, who conceived of an operation, developed with surgeon Dr. Alfred Blalock, at Johns Hopkins University that alleviated an often fatal condition in children, commonly known as blue-baby syndrome, recalls that "women were permitted to take some courses at Harvard, but it depended entirely on whether or not the professor wanted to have women in his class." She also talks about how difficult it was not to get the recognition she deserved. "Over the years I've gotten recognition for what I did, but I didn't at the time. It hurt for a while. It hurt when Dr. Blalock was elected to the National Academy of Arts and Sciences and I didn't even get promoted from an assistant to associate professor..."

We get a real sense of the difficulties African American women had in dealing with discrimination and in fighting for civil rights. Addie Wyatt, Vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International and Director of Civil Rights and Women's Affairs Department, tells us; "In the early forties in most places, if you got hired as a white typist of a fair complexion you might have earned about $12 a week, and if you were black like me-dark-and got hired at all, you might have earned somewhere around $8 dollars a week."

Of particular interest are the childhood stories because they foreshadow their future careers and because you get a real feeling for the person speaking. In the first interview, Frances Steloff, who played a unique role in the literary world of the 1920' and 1930's, and who founded the Gotham Book Mart in New York City in 1920's, reveals: "I used to feel cheated, cheated by having my mother die, cheated by having my stepmother beat me." The interview ends with a description of her father's love of books. She tells us that he kept his books on a shelf in the attic, high up near the ceiling. "Even if I stood on a chair, I couldn't reach them. If he ever dropped one of his books on the floor, he picked it up and kissed it." No wonder Francis Steloff ended up owning a bookshop! Lynn Gilbert's photograph accompanying the text gives us a sense of Steloff's personality: the way she stands, one arm nonchalantly draped over a bookshelf, head tilted back, looking straight into the eyes of the viewer.

Grace Murray Hopper, who developed the computer program called Cobol, tells us that when she was a child her "mother would always go around at night and set all the alarm clocks. One night she went around and they had all been taken apart. What had happened was that I'd taken the first one apart and then I couldn't get it together so I ended up opening the next one... I was born with curiosity. I always claim that I had a strong resemblance to the elephant's child in Kipling's Just So Stories who pokes his nose into everybody's business."

There are just so many wonderful stories in Particular Passions. The interviews and photographs give us a unique opportunity to appreciate the changes that have occurred in women's lives from the 1920's to the 1980's, but in a tangible way through the personal victories and losses of these forty-six remarkable women, changes which affected not only their lives but our own lives today. Reading Particular Passions will make you want to find your own passion if you do not already have one, or if you have a passion, it will make you want to pursue it with greater determination. It will make you want to emulate Lucy Jarvis, the first woman producer in network prime-time programming, who says, "I'm the kind of person that if I believe in what I can do, I just don't let anything stop me."

A friend handed me a copy of Particular Passions. I looked at the cover images and smiled, seeing familiar faces from the women's movement of my youth. And then I dipped into the book. This is a very special book indeed.

I am keeping this book. I'm not giving it back. I want to give it to my granddaughter, now age six, when she is 18; yes, twelve years from now when she is going to college, when she might be ready to hear about what her grandmother's generation tried to do for her and how hard the struggle was. Perhaps, also, I want to make sure that she keeps high expectations for herself, knowing all the women who had high hopes for her.

It seems to me that we start the women's movement over and over and over again. I look at these wonderful pictures; I read the wonderful words of these women and my eyes tear up. They are so brave. They faced the expectation that they were inconsequential - yet, here they are, wonderful women, brave women, inspiring women.

Particular Passions is an extraordinary book that offers intimate conversations with 45 fascinating women of various disciplines. Interviews include, in the Arts and Sciences - Agnes de Mille, Louise Nevelson, Rosalyn Yalow, Margaret Mead; Politics - Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug; Journalism - Barbara Walters, Ada Louise Huxtable, Sylvia Poter; Fashion - Diana Vreeland; Athlete Billie Jean King.

The unique format of the book is that each women tells her own story, in her own words. Unlike Malcolm Gladwell's assertion in Outliers, some women excelled because of their situations, and some women excelled against all odds.
One has no idea what each interview holds -- and all are fascinating.

Each selects vignettes from her life to illustrate her statements, and in essence, each woman has prepared her own eulogy. The interviews contain sacred family histories, make-or-break moments, and reflections of what it all cost personally and emotionally, and what their success means to them.

I love reading well-written obituaries - it is fascinating to learn of the adversity and accomplishment of people's lives. And this is even better -- because the interview take places in real time and in the women's own words.

I don't know that I've come across another book quite like it -- but I am very glad that I came upon it.

There is tremendous inspiration in these stories of uncommon women. They are women who are rich or poor, educated or less so, but the single trait they have in common is extraordinary persistence no matter how tough things get. Although this book was first published 29 years ago, it strikes me as having particular relevance to these difficult times. For anyone who has ever felt like giving up-and who hasn't--keep this book on your bedside table. It's like having a mentor.

And if you don't have time to read each story, take a good look at Lynn Gilbert's photographs. These are real women with heart, soul, humanity and humility--and Gilbert succeeds in capturing those elements in a single picture.

Bonnie Webster

Remarkable stories by remarkable women who had the vision, courage, and perseverence to succeed in their "particular passions". Important reading for any modern woman who wishes to comprehend the opportunities and challenges before her. We are the beneficiaries of Lynn Gilbert's bold idea to create a photographic and oral history these early pioneers.

Lynn Gilbert & Gaylen Moore
Particular Passions:
Talks with Women Who Have Shaped Our Times

(New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1981) 340 pages

46 successful women talk about their lives and their philosophies.
Some pursued conventional purposes,
but many directed their lives in creative and innovative ways.
Good models for other women, who can accomplish even better things.
This book also gives a good glimpse of life in 20th-century America.
A photograph of each woman is included.
In the estimate of this reviewer, the most Authentic women are:
Margaret Mead, Margaret Kuhn,
Gloria Steinem, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, & Betty Friedan.

If you would like to read about others in quest of greater autonomy,
search the Internet for: "Authenticity Bibliography".

James Leonard Park, existential philosopher