A Life in Motion

Frontmatter

F L O R E N C E H O W E Published in 2011 by the Feminist Press at the City University of New York The Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406 New York, NY 10016 feministpress.org Text copyright © 2011 by Florence Howe All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. First printing April 2011 Cover and text design by Drew Stevens Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Howe, Florence. A life in motion / by Florence Howe. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-55861-697-4 1. Howe, Florence. 2. Feminists—United States—Biography. 3. Teachers— United States—Biography. I. Title. HQ1413.H678A3 2011 305.42092dc22 [B] 2010041446 Also by Florence Howe The Conspiracy of the Young (with Paul Lauter), 1970. Seven Years Later: Women’s Studies Programs in 1976, 1977. Myths of Coeducation: Selected Essays, 1964–1983, 1984. Edited Books No More Masks! An Anthology of Poetry by Women (with Ellen Bass), 1973. Women and the Power to Change (with Adrienne Rich), 1975. Women Working: Stories and Poems (with Nancy Hoffman), 1979. Everywoman’s Guide to Colleges and Universities (with Suzanne Howard and Mary Jo Boehm Strauss), 1982. With Wings: Literature by and about Women with Disabilities (with Marsha Saxton), 1987. Tradition and the Talents of Women, 1991. No More Masks! Second Edition, 1993. Almost Touching the Skies: Coming of Age Stories (with Jean Casella), 2000. The Politics of Women’s Studies: Testimony from Thirty Founding Mothers, 2000. Her mind closed stubbornly against remembering, not the past but the legend of the past, other people’s memory of the past, at which she had spent her life peering in wonder like a child at a magic-lantern show. . . . Let them tell their stories to each other. Let them go on explaining how things happened. I don’t care. At least I can know the truth about what happens to me, she assured herself silently, making a promise to herself, in her hopefulness, her ignorance. —Katherine Ann Porter,“Old Mortality” Knowledge is always the inseparable twin of pain and suffering. —Sashi Deshpandi, Small Remedies To Tillie and Jack Olsen ...