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Millicent Fenwick: Her Way de Amy Schapiro

Millicent Fenwick: Her Way

Autor Amy Schapiro
en Limba Engleză Hardback – 12 feb 2003

Începutul secolului XX, mai exact anul 1910, marca venirea pe lume a unei figuri care avea să sfideze toate convențiile aristocrației americane. Ne imaginăm o fetiță crescută în confortul elitei din New Jersey, a cărei lume este zdruncinată violent de scufundarea transatlanticului Lusitania, dezastru în care își pierde mama. Această fragilitate timpurie nu a înfrânt-o, ci a modelat o reziliență neobișnuită pe care o descoperim pe parcursul celor 310 pagini ale biografiei scrise de Amy Schapiro. Remarcăm transformarea spectaculoasă a unei femei care, după un mariaj eșuat și paisprezece ani petrecuți în redacția elegantă a revistei Vogue, decide să intre în arena politică într-un moment în care majoritatea contemporanilor săi se pregăteau de retragere. În 1974, la vârsta de 64 de ani, ea ajungea în Congres, fiind descrisă de presă drept un „triumf geriatric”, dar și-a câștigat rapid respectul colegilor, devenind cunoscută ca „conștiința Congresului”. Stilul narativ al lui Amy Schapiro este unul cinematic, reușind să surprindă contrastul dintre imaginea sa publică — personajul de bandă desenată care fuma pipă — și rigoarea intelectuală a unui legislator dedicat drepturilor civile. Cine a apreciat portretul din Jeannette Rankin de James J. Lopach va găsi aici aceeași profunzime biografică, aplicată însă contextului postbelic american, unde Fenwick s-a impus nu doar ca o prezență excentrică, ci ca o forță politică onestă și independentă. Reținem din această lucrare, publicată de Rutgers University Press, nu doar cronica unei cariere, ci portretul unei femei care a demonstrat că integritatea și eleganța pot coabita în cel mai dur mediu de putere.

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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780813532318
ISBN-10: 0813532310
Pagini: 310
Ilustrații: 18
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 28 mm
Greutate: 0.62 kg
Ediția:First Edition, First Edition
Editura: Rutgers University Press
Colecția Rutgers University Press

De ce să citești această carte

Recomandăm această biografie cititorilor interesați de istoria politică și de parcursurile feminine atipice. Veți descoperi povestea fascinantă a unei femei care s-a reinventat la 60 de ani, trecând de la jurnalism de modă la activism pentru drepturi civile. Este o lecție despre integritate și curajul de a-ți păstra vocea proprie, indiferent de vârstă sau de presiunile de partid, oferind o perspectivă rară asupra culiselor Washingtonului.

Despre autor

Amy Schapiro este originară din New Jersey și locuiește în prezent în Washington, DC, unde lucrează în cadrul Departamentului de Justiție al Statelor Unite. Această experiență în mediul juridic și administrativ american i-a oferit rigoarea necesară pentru a documenta viața lui Millicent Fenwick. Schapiro a beneficiat de un acces fără precedent la documentele personale, scrisorile și fotografiile lui Fenwick, oferite de fiul acesteia, Hugh, reușind astfel să scrie prima biografie completă a acestei figuri emblematice a politicii americane.

Descriere scurtă

Amy Schapiro has written the first biography of Millicent Fenwick, the popular and colorful New Jersey congresswoman. Affectionately remembered as the pipe-smoking grandmother who served as the model for Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury character Lacey Davenport, Fenwick defied such simplistic expectations to become, in the words of Walter Cronkite, “the conscience of Congress.” 

Born in 1910 into comfortable circumstances, Fenwick faced tragedy at an early age when her mother was lost in the sinking of the Lusitania. Following an upper-class childhood and a failed marriage, she began a fourteen-year career at Vogue magazine.

In the 1960s, Fenwick became involved in the civil rights movement and took part in local and state politics in New Jersey. Blessed with striking good looks and a sharp wit, she cut a glamorous figure, rising quickly through the ranks of the state Republican Party at a time when most of her peers were retiring. When this colorful, outspoken figure—one of only five New Jersey women ever elected to Congress— went to Washington in 1974 at age sixty-four, her victory was portrayed by the media as a “geriatric triumph.”

Schapiro’s extensive interviews with Fenwick’s son, Hugh, who granted her exclusive rights to Fenwick’s personal papers, oral histories, letters, and photographs, provide rare insight into the life and career of one of America’s most memorable politicians.

Notă biografică

AMY SCHAPIRO is a native New Jerseyan who currently lives in the Washington, D.C., area and works at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Recenzii

Amy Schapiro has written more than a biography of our late Representative Millicent Fenwick. She has ingeniously smuggled in a sociology lesson about life in the upper crust of the Garden State, a social milieu that outsiders cannot fathom. . . . Her even-handed approach makes this one of the most admirable works of its kind that I have read in recent years.

In her new biography of Fenwick, Millicent Fenwick: My Wayùa project that began as a college thesisùWashington-area writer Amy Schapiro delves into Fenwick's life, providing a description far richer than the Lacey Davenport fatade. . . . It is refreshing to read a biography that is virutally free of authorial polemics.

A new biography, the first ever on Fenwick, sheds new light on the life of Fenwick.

Provides rare insight into the life and career of one of America's most memorable politicians.

Schapiro, a social science analyst for the U.S. Department of Justice, adequately recounts Fenwick's past in abundant detail.

The book is enriched by the fact that Ms. FenwickÆs son, Hugh, granted Ms. Schapiro exclusive rights to his motherÆs personal papers. æThis included unlimited access to the Fenwick attic, in which I found correspondence from MillicentÆs father, grandmother, and, of course, her, the author said. æThe most valuable items were her personal journals, photographs, and correspondence with her husband.Æ.

An engaging new biography by Amy Schapiro, Millicent Fenwick: Her Way charts the unlikely career of the ambassadorÆs daughter who became a pearl-wearing, pipe-smoking politico.

Four-term Congress member Millicent Fenwick, the patrician descendant of Colonial landholders, hailed from wealthy Bernardsville, NJ. She had an unhappy family life and spent 14 years as a writer and editor at Vogue. Then the liberal Republican activist began a successful political career on the local school board, advancing through state offices until, in 1974 at the age of 64, she won election to Congress. Fenwick focused her efforts on civil rights for African Americans and women and protections for farm workers and prisoners; she also played a signal role in bringing the suppression of Soviet dissidents to public attention. Having lost a Senate race in 1982 after New Jersey was redistricted, Fenwick was appointed to a United Nations post by Ronald Reagan. Fenwick, who was the model for the Doonesbury character Lacey Davenport, is best remembered as an idiosyncratic, witty, pipe-smoking aristocrat of impeccable integrity. Schapiro, a social science analyst for the U.S. Department of Justice, adequately recounts Fenwick's past in abundant detail. Of interest chiefly to New Jersey libraries and collections devoted to the study of politics.

A decade after FenwickÆs death, her legacy is explored in a full-scale biography.

Though she served as the model for the impeccably proper Lacey Davenport in Garry TrudeauÆs Doonesbury, Fenwick preferred to be known as the hardworking congresswoman she was. Her biography is long overdue.

She was deeply principled in politics for all the right reasons, to fulfill a deep burning desire to achieve justice for all people. Her commitment to the underdogs of the world was matched only by her wit.

I had the pleasure of serving in the United States Congress with Millicent Fenwick, and I can state unequivocally that Ms. Schapiro's compelling portrayal has captured the essence of one of the most extraordinary people ever to grace Capitol Hill. Walter Cronkite was rightùMillicent was the conscience of the Congress.

This old-fashioned lady is also a thoroughly modern woman. . . . She is an elegant, literate, dead-honest legislator whose somewhat patrician manner gets on some people's nerves and amuses others. She has often defied the Republican Party line, championing consumer causes, women's rights and civil rights long before they were fashionable.