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Bateson teaches a class on "women's life histories" at Spelman College, an all-black women's college in Atlanta, and carefully assembles her students from traditional-age undergrads and older women from outside the school who can offer a different generational perspective. Together they investigate questions about their knowledge of the self and of others through reading multicultural histories of women and by writing their own stories. Bateson is at her best when she draws out her students, finding parallels in their stories with her own well-considered anthropological observations. She's less effective when she wanders off into generalizations about how to live that seem overly didactic and sometimes outdated--the suburbs, for instance, are no longer quite the all-white 1950s hideaway she imagines, where those who don't like the "smell of other people's cooking" escape. Readers who want new tools for thinking about learning, as well as those who loved Bateson's 1989 bestseller Composing a Life, will nevertheless find much to enjoy. --Maria Dolan
dialogue in a classroom at Spelman College where young African-American women and their elders search for meaning and understanding in each other's life stories."
--Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot, author of Respect: An Exploration
"With her customary wisdom and subtle wit, Mary Catherine Bateson helps us think about the great divide that we all live with but few discuss: the enormously different life experiences of members of different generations. Drawing on the deeply personal and self-revealing stories both of young women just starting out and of women who have lived long, varied lives, she takes us on a stirring journey through the wonder and challenge of life and self in our fast-changing world."
--Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don't Understand
"A wonderfully knowing and engaging book by an anthropologist who has learned a lot from her students and tells us what it means to be an American--and how a nation's citizens vary in accordance with their age, their particular experiences."
--Robert Coles, James Agee Professor of Social Ethics, Harvard University
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