In The Firebrand and the First Lady, scholar Patricia Bell-Scott illuminates the unlikely friendship between two historic American women. Radical civil and women’s rights activist Pauli Murray and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt corresponded for years and swayed one another’s social justice aims and strategies. Their views never converged, but Bell-Scott makes a compelling case that they grew with and toward each other.
“I started out being interested primarily in doing a biography, but then the friendship just drew me in,” Bell-Scott says of her decadeslong quest to capture the relationship and its impact—both on the women and the country.
Murray saw Roosevelt for the first time in 1934 at Camp Tera, a government-sponsored facility for unemployed women. Murray was an indigent resident, and Roosevelt was the camp’s visionary, visiting to confer with residents and ensure the camp was adequately staffed, equipped, and integrated. Twenty-four-years old, malnourished, and suffering from respiratory problems, Murray was exactly the kind of young woman Roosevelt meant the New Deal camp to serve. Continue reading “Patricia Bell-Scott Discusses The Firebrand and the First Lady”
In The Firebrand and the First Lady, scholar Patricia Bell-Scott illuminates the unlikely friendship between two historic American women. Radical civil and women’s rights activist Pauli Murray and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt corresponded for years and swayed one another’s social justice aims and strategies. Their views never converged, but Bell-Scott makes a compelling case that they grew with and toward each other.
“I started out being interested primarily in doing a biography, but then the friendship just drew me in,” Bell-Scott says of her decadeslong quest to capture the relationship and its impact—both on the women and the country.
Murray saw Roosevelt for the first time in 1934 at Camp Tera, a government-sponsored facility for unemployed women. Murray was an indigent resident, and Roosevelt was the camp’s visionary, visiting to confer with residents and ensure the camp was adequately staffed, equipped, and integrated. Twenty-four-years old, malnourished, and suffering from respiratory problems, Murray was exactly the kind of young woman Roosevelt meant the New Deal camp to serve. Continue reading “Patricia Bell-Scott Discusses The Firebrand and the First Lady”
It’s Toast Time in Austin, the wonderful season when exceptional parties bloom around town in support of the St. David’s Foundation Neal Kocurek Scholarship Fund.
I had the distinct pleasure of participating in the first two parties this year. I moderated a discussion with Karan Mahajan, author of The Association Small Bombs, at Saturday afternoon’s event, then appeared on Tuesday night with Shaka at a party where he was the featured speaker. Both were great opportunities to show support for Central Texas students like Jona Mata and Tevon Hood in their quests for healthcare careers. Continue reading “St. David’s Foundation Toast of the Town 2017”
It’s Toast Time in Austin, the wonderful season when exceptional parties bloom around town in support of the St. David’s Foundation Neal Kocurek Scholarship Fund.
I had the distinct pleasure of participating in the first two parties this year. I moderated a discussion with Karan Mahajan, author of The Association Small Bombs, at Saturday afternoon’s event, then appeared on Tuesday night with Shaka at a party where he was the featured speaker. Both were great opportunities to show support for Central Texas students like Jona Mata and Tevon Hood in their quests for healthcare careers. Continue reading “St. David’s Foundation Toast of the Town 2017”
It is an honor to be featured in Tribeza Magazine’s People of the Year for 2017-the artists, thinkers, builders, and visionaries shaping the future of Austin.
Continue reading “Tribeza Magazine’s Person of the Year 2017”Gila Jones played it safe in her twenties, following a well-worn path from a government degree from Harvard University to an NYU law degree and a job with a prestigious law firm. After five years with the firm, she took an unexpected leap into the corporate world and became general counsel of an LA-based apparel company. At 31, she traded the security of a defined career ladder for the challenge and responsibility of leading an entire legal operation. Sixteen months in, she’s still leaning in and loving it!
- Name: Gila Jones
- Age: 32
- Work: General Counsel for a Los Angeles-based fashion brand
- Educational background: Bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard University; Law degree from New York University
A silhouette of a 1950s housewife emblazoned with the words “emotional,” “bossy” and “too nice” stood out among the other magazine covers depicting skyscrapers and suit-clad executives. I grabbed the magazine off the rack, wondering what exactly the editors meant that cover to convey. Were they suggesting that those descriptors were as outdated as the woman’s bob hairstyle? I sure hoped so.
It was the Harvard Business Review. I flipped to the article, “Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers” (by Herminia Ibarra, Robin Ely and Deborah Kolb), and marveled at the image selected to illustrate it: a two-page spread of artist Janet Echelman’s soaring Amsterdam Light Festival sculpture installation. Vital and cerebral, the hi-tech yet animate work evoked the kind of unfettered intelligence and creativity that leaders should possess.
But this article, unlike Echelman’s acclaimed TED Talk, wasn’t about taking imagination seriously. Instead, jargon like “second-generation gender bias” and “identity workspaces” jarred against Echelman’s breathtaking art. The sculpture’s buoyant spirit couldn’t have contrasted more sharply with the article’s neutered corporate speak.
Continue reading “What Does It Really Take for Women to Become Corporate Leaders?”I celebrated a birthday in September and, in true internet-age fashion, did a Google search on women born in my birth year, 1980. Turns out I share it with Christina Aguilera, Gisele Bundchen, Kim Kardashian and Venus Williams. All four are powerhouse women at the top of their games in highly public fields. They’ve built multimillion-dollar personal brands with incredible work ethic and uncommon drive. Three are also moms.
I could look at these peers and see a lot standing between their accomplishments and mine. But that would miss the point. Birthdays give us a perfect occasion to ponder the gap between where we are and where we’ve always longed to be.
I never aspired to be a pop icon, supermodel, reality star or elite tennis player. But I always thought I would be a nationally recognized author. Problem was: I didn’t always work like one.
I suspect that the ladies above grasped early on something that I was slower to recognize. That once you figure out your niche — something you’ve got some talent for and interest in—you’ve got to imagine yourself performing at your peak and find the motivation to pursue the vision relentlessly. Every day.
Gisele remarked in British Vogue: “I tell my five sisters, who don’t work at it very hard at all, whatever you put in, you get out. I’m not afraid of working hard at anything, whatever it is. I just always want to be the best that I can.”
My big dreams remain, but as a mother, I’ve got to be considerably more creative in their pursuit. Getting from point A to point B with a two-year-old in tow requires a bit more strength and flexibility than when I was flying solo. Now I have to work at the dream and at finding time, space and energy to pursue it. Fortunately, motherhood builds just that kind of muscle with its nonstop demands and the ultimate motivation—a little being who’s watching your every move.
Continue reading “Reflecting on Priorities in Life and Motherhood, Two Years In”Mexican moms teach their children to greet adults with a peck on the cheek and few Norwegian women see obstetricians (there, midwives rule). Or so, Cup of Jo’s Motherhood Around the World series teaches us. Reading about American expat moms’ experiences abroad got me thinking about how parenting in my own neighborhood might look to outsiders. Surely, folks from other places might find some of our habits peculiar. Indeed, when I pause to consider them, some of the things I’ve seen—and done—surprise me too.
Of course, what follows is a mix of generalizations, over-simplifications and triviality. But what isn’t?
Continue reading “Strange Parenting Rituals of the Young and Restless”Lydia Netzer’s debut novel “Shine Shine Shine” blasts through locales as far flung as Burma, Norfolk and the moon to land among my favorite novels.
Fueled by strange and nuanced characters, emotional heft and serious action, this stellar novel deftly probes the dark matter of marriage and motherhood. Over two generations, it mines the characters’ long-held secrets and festering wounds to reveal depths of strength and vulnerability.
Netzer brings many talents to bear on this project—deeply imagined characters, fresh humor and cinematic sweep. She moves assuredly from the subatomic particles of identity—the stories we tell ourselves—to the supergalactic forces of creation and birth, literally labor. And she does so without undue adherence to chronology or order. I loved its messy, far-ranging ambition.
The roving, offbeat novel is at once a romance involving two remarkable individuals bound together from youth, a belated-coming-of-age story and a moving portrait of motherhood in damning circumstances. It all orbits a woman, named Sunny, who appears to be anything but.
While other novels have earned more critical acclaim, this is one whose characters lodged themselves in my gut. It’s the kind of story that you digest, instead of merely read. Its ideas—particularly about women’s obligations to those we love and the deep reserves of fortitude we must tap to fulfill them—must be broken down, absorbed and consumed by the body.
Over and over again, the high drama of car crashes and intimate betrayals is grounded in the telling details of Sunny’s personal topography—the lies she tells, the objects she covets, the illusions she nurtures. As a reader, I witnessed Sunny reimagine herself through retellings of her story on the playgrounds of her youth, in an elective poetry class in college, at a housewarming party in adulthood, in her own mind. More importantly, as a woman-mother-wife, I empathized with the thorny tangles of manipulation and maturation evident within her shifting personal narratives.
“When you are sitting on a three-legged stool and you’ve kicked out all three legs, but you’re still sitting upright, must you assume that you’re just so good, you levitate? Or, must you assume that you were sitting on the ground all along?,” Sunny ponders when another of life’s meteors comes crashing her way. “When there’s nothing left to burn, maybe you have to set yourself on fire.”
Ultimately, like its protagonist, this novel doesn’t just shine, it blazes.
I began planning my daughter’s second birthday party just hours before it was scheduled to start (of course!). I knew from my crazy blog habit that I should have ordered gorgeous personalized party invitations, lemonade bottles and goodie bags adorned with elegant fonts, photography and tiara imagery from Pinhole Press weeks before.
But I’m a lover, not a planner. Or at least, that was my response to my mother, who asked about the party relentlessly in the two weeks leading up to it.
Continue reading “How to celebrate a two-year-old’s birthday”