I went to my college reunion last weekend, and I'm still on a high from it. (I almost cried the first time the new Wellesley College president -- a Black woman! -- walked into the room.) It's impossible to explain what Wellesley College is like to anyone who didn't go to a women's college (or girls high school), but even those of you who didn't will understand just why a weekend spent with thousands of smart and accomplished women was so life affirming after this past year. We slept on uncomfortable dorm beds and stayed up too late and danced with women 50 years older and 20 years younger than us and drank too much wine and talked about our hopes and dreams and successes and disappointments and told each other how much we loved one another, and it was perfect, from beginning to end. If you want to be immersed in a fictional world like this one, I have two great book options for you. The first, DADDY LONG LEGS, is about an orphan who gets rescued by an anonymous philanthropist and sent to an unnammed women's college. I went to college over 80 years after this book was published, and there's still so much in it that resonates with me about my own college experience. Warning: this book will make you mad about the patriarchy, because the Daddy of the title does some real problematic things (that I think were supposed to read as romantic in 1912 but do not to me in 2017), but then, what doesn't make me mad about the patriarchy these days? The second, A NIGHT TO SURRENDER by Tessa Dare, is set in a village in Regency England called Spindle Cove, where parents send their young women who are too mouthy or smart or shy or interesting to be marriageable. It's a gloriously feminist romance novel, and is the first of that series, so if you haven't read any of them, you're in for a treat.
Sisterhood, pink lipgloss, and cake
Sisterhood, pink lipgloss, and cake
Sisterhood, pink lipgloss, and cake
I went to my college reunion last weekend, and I'm still on a high from it. (I almost cried the first time the new Wellesley College president -- a Black woman! -- walked into the room.) It's impossible to explain what Wellesley College is like to anyone who didn't go to a women's college (or girls high school), but even those of you who didn't will understand just why a weekend spent with thousands of smart and accomplished women was so life affirming after this past year. We slept on uncomfortable dorm beds and stayed up too late and danced with women 50 years older and 20 years younger than us and drank too much wine and talked about our hopes and dreams and successes and disappointments and told each other how much we loved one another, and it was perfect, from beginning to end. If you want to be immersed in a fictional world like this one, I have two great book options for you. The first, DADDY LONG LEGS, is about an orphan who gets rescued by an anonymous philanthropist and sent to an unnammed women's college. I went to college over 80 years after this book was published, and there's still so much in it that resonates with me about my own college experience. Warning: this book will make you mad about the patriarchy, because the Daddy of the title does some real problematic things (that I think were supposed to read as romantic in 1912 but do not to me in 2017), but then, what doesn't make me mad about the patriarchy these days? The second, A NIGHT TO SURRENDER by Tessa Dare, is set in a village in Regency England called Spindle Cove, where parents send their young women who are too mouthy or smart or shy or interesting to be marriageable. It's a gloriously feminist romance novel, and is the first of that series, so if you haven't read any of them, you're in for a treat.