Alison Baker is a writer and oral historian living in New York City, a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, class of ’62. IT’S GOOD TO BE A WOMAN is her second book, following Voices of Resistance: Oral Histories of Moroccan Women (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1998). 

What did you do before you became a writer and oral historian?

I didn’t take up writing and oral history until after I turned fifty, so “before” covers most of my working life. Like the women in this book I came of age in the early years of the Kennedy administration, a time of extraordinary optimism and idealism, when we thought we could change the world,

I made my way through the decades after college more or less in step with my classmates:

In the 1960s, I joined the foreign service, married and had children. I was living abroad for most of the decade, in Burma, Benin, Vietnam and Taiwan.

In the 1970s, I joined a women’s consciousness-raising group, divorced, earned a PhD (in history and Asian studies), and forged a career in academic administration.

In the 1980s, I lived with my children in Paris for a semester, launched an “Academic Year in New York City” (a sort of junior year abroad in the City) together with a colleague, and worked with Operation Crossroads Africa developing programs for international visitors.

In 1990, I went to Morocco as academic director of an American study abroad program, got more and more interested in stories older women were telling me about what they had done in the Moroccan independence movement, resigned from the study abroad program, and went back to Morocco to pursue my own research. I ended up spending most of the decade in Morocco, writing a book, Voices of Resistance, and making a video (Still Ready: Three Women from the Moroccan Resistance) together with a Moroccan filmmaker.

How did you get from Morocco to Bryn Mawr?

In both cases, the subjects really found me rather than the other way around. In Morocco, the stories that first caught my attention were Moroccan folktales, many of which feature a strong, smart heroine who outwits the men in authority to get what she wants. Then I began hearing other stories, about women who were active in the fight against French colonialism—written histories included nothing on this subject. So I began doing tape-recorded interviews, “doing” oral history before I really knew anything about its theory and practice.

At Bryn Mawr, the stories I heard from classmates at our 25^th class reunion were what first caught my attention. But it wasn’t until about ten years later, when I was back on campus giving a talk on Moroccan women, that I thought about writing a book. As in Morocco, good stories and compelling personalities were what first piqued my interest. Then I began to see larger themes and a group focus. I realized that these women, born just six years before the start of the baby boom, were the opening wedge of a feminist movement breaking down barriers for women entering the professions. And I realized that we’ve heard a lot about fifties housewives and sixties rebels and hippies, but we don’t really know much about the quieter generation of women who came in between.        

It’s Good To Be a Woman is focused on a specific Bryn Mawr class. Why should people who have no connection to Bryn Mawr be interested?

You’re right, it is specific, talking about a particular group of women all of whom were in the class of ’62 at Bryn Mawr College. It is oral history, which by its very nature focuses on the local and the specific, history from the bottom up. That said, there are several ways in which the book speaks to larger audiences.

1. The struggle to find an identity and purpose in life is universal, and the experience of these particular women, navigating a world in flux, with a lot of mixed messages, has resonance and lessons for all women (and even some men).
   
   
2. Alumnae of women’s colleges should find the book especially relevant. In an era when women were treated as second-class citizens, women’s colleges (and girls’ schools) took them seriously. The title of the book comes from a longer quote, a classmate talking about why it made a difference to go to Bryn Mawr: “At Radcliffe, the big agenda was boys, from Harvard. You were really learning how to be a second-class citizen. At Bryn Mawr, you’re brought up with the idea that it’s good to be a woman. There’s nothing second class about being a woman.” (Apologies to Radcliffe graduates!)
   
   
3. This book fits into a well-established literary genre of college class studies, in both fiction (the classic here is The Group, by Mary McCarthy, about some women from Vassar, class of ’33) and non-fiction. The fascination is that you get to follow several individuals, whose different destinies spin off from a shared moment at college, “coming of age.” Follow them as they march through the decades, going through the same historical times at the same ages. The stories in It’s Good to be a Woman play out against a panorama of the last half of the twentieth century, showing the interplay between the forces of history and individual lives.
   

What kinds of books do you like to read, and what have you been reading recently?

I like history, and I’m especially interested in Burma and in China. Two terrific books that I just recently finished reading are Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present, by Peter Hessler and The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma, by Thant Myint-U. Both authors set out to explain present-day Chinese/Burmese society and politics by exploring their roots in history. Both authors are part of the story. Peter Hessler taught English literature as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Fuling, a town on the Yangtze, for two years, and wrote a book about the experience (Rivertown). In Oracle Bones, Hessler uses the lives of ordinary people to tell the story of modern China, some of them his former students from Fuling. Thant Myint-U is the grandson of U Thant, former UN Secretary General, and descended on his father’s side from a line of courtiers who served at Burma’s Court of Ava for nearly two centuries. He tells the story of modern Burma and the story of his own family in an interwoven narrative, a rich, dramatic history.

I’ve also been reading Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them, by Francine Prose. This is a great book, and surely all of us would find ourselves somewhere among its intended audience, as the subtitle suggests. What comes across is Prose’s enormous enthusiasm for books, and admiration for a wide range of authors. This is not a book you read quickly cover-to-cover. You find yourself absolutely impelled to read (or reread) the books she refers to (and in case you don’t, there is a 4-page list of Books To Be Read Immediately as an appendix).

A good friend gave me Timothy, or Notes of an Abject Reptile, by Verlyn Klinkenberg, a delightful bedside read, a slim volume that seems to go best at tortoise pace, lumbering and stopping for rest.

Finally, a memoir and a novel, discovered more or less by chance while bookstore browsing. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards, and The Glass Castle: A Memoir, by Jeanette Walls. I liked them both, the Glass Castle especially, a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, beautifully written, of growing up with parents who were dangerously dysfunctional, also brilliant and charismatic.

What are you doing now?

I’m working on an expanded, interactive version of It’s Good to be a Woman, and a film, and starting research for a new book.