A Life in Motion

13. Growing Pains at the Feminist Press

— 342 — 13 Growing Pains at the Feminist Press We live in years, swift flying, transient years. We hold the possible future in our hands but not by wish and will, only by thought, plan, knowledge, and organization. W.E.B. Dubois, Essays on Education November 1980 was to mark the Feminist Press’s tenth anniversary, and from my point of view, I was arriving “home” in the summer of that year after my two peripatetic years, jubilant because of the Copenhagen forum’s evident success. I was also aware that I had two “gifts” with me: large grants that would assure the next several years of financing. When I had agreed to write the proposal for Everywoman’s Guide from the Feminist Press rather than from Wellesley, I thought I had also gained agreement from staff that I would, on my return, become one of them, and receive the agreed-upon $12,000 salary that had been established by majority vote when we began the Women’s Lives project five years earlier. I had voted against that idea, but as was customary for those who lost votes, I had agreed to abide by it. If my three European trips had made for fresh resentment among staff members, I was blithely unaware of these feelings, for I quickly announced that we were likely to see, as a result of my travel, a second large grant, this one from Mariam Chamberlain at the Ford Foundation to establish Women’s Studies International: A Network and a Resource Project. — 343 — At the end of May, I had moved back to an apartment-scarce New York, taking a sublet at Terry Saario’s beautiful East Side apartment, convinced that President Jimmy Carter would win a second term easily against Ronald Reagan. Terry was deputy assistant secretary in the education department of the Carter administration ,on leave from the Ford Foundation.I didn’t want the second bedroom as a study, for I assumed I would be so busy teaching half time at Old Westbury and working full time at the Feminist Press that I would need only rest at the end of each day. My judgment was keen, but I was less prescient about the angst that would fill the months from summer to the end of 1980 and even a bit beyond, mainly because I wanted to“join” a staff of twenty-two, nearly half of whom would rather that I had stayed in Ohio or that I worked invisibly from home. I didn’t know this at first, or perhaps I didn’t want to face it. I assumed that, once we had the grant in hand for Everywoman’s Guide, all would move forward smoothly. When I met with the steering committee, of which I was a member, the four other members said I could not be a staff member and receive twelve thousand dollars, since I was a faculty member and earning another salary. No one acknowledged that my joining the staff had been agreed to when I first discussed the new project with them. This is hard for me to write, as it was hard for me to bear, for I was still the adolescent who wanted to be liked, to be accepted, to be part of the group. So I could not at first believe that the decision would hold in a full staff meeting. Did I point out that several staff members had husbands who, in fact, supported them with a salary perhaps five times the size of my half-time Old Westbury one? Did I point out that I had written the Women’s Lives and the Everywoman’s Guide grants and was still responsible for reporting on them? I remember feeling baffled, my throat and chest choked. Perhaps I also didn’t say that I knew the foundations would not award grants to the Feminist Press without an academic and a host collegiate institution. Some of the staff thought they could get along without grants. But what about offices? We paid for the heat, electric, phone, postage, but we didn’t pay rent for the building. I — 344 — can’t remember whether the staff was unanimously against me, but certainly a majority voted no. Then I told the staff that I had no recourse but to appeal to the newly established board of directors. They may have been surprised by my request, but the...