Feminists Reclaim Mentorship

Nancy K. Miller is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her many books include My Brilliant Friends: Our Lives in Feminism; Breathless: An American Girl in Paris; What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past; and But Enough About Me: Why We Read Other People's Lives. Tahneer Oksman is Associate Professor of Academic Writing at Marymount Manhattan College. She is the author of "How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?": Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs and coeditor (with Seamus O'Malley) of The Comics of Julie Doucet and Gabrielle Bell: A Place Inside Yourself.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Mutual EngagementsNancy K. Miller and Tahneer OksmanPart I. Two-Way Streets: Finding Mentors / Becoming Mentors Rosemarie's HandsRachel AdamsTears, Idle Tears: Mentoring English Graduate Students from 1973 to 2010Susan GubarThe Making of an Intellectual: Mentoring, Mothering, and a Black Feminist JourneyMichele Faith WallaceWhen Am I Supposed to Stop Asking You for Advice? Hillary ChuteMentorship: By Any Means NecessarySharifa HamptonThe Accidental MentorJennifer CreweCan a Therapist Be a Mentor? Kamy WicoffThe Reluctant Writer: Looking Back on My MentorsSarah Glazer"That was where I felt most myself ": A Conversation with Sarah Burnes about Books, Mentors, Feminism, and MothersTahneer OksmanHow I Came to America and Discovered Female MentorsMikhal DekelRainmaker: How a Mentor Transformed My DestinyMichelle Yasmine ValladaresTransformative Adaptations: Tracking Fay Gale as a TeacherElizabeth WoodDear AntAoibheann SweeneyPart II. Rearview Mirror: Mentoring at a Distance ReadyJoy LadinMentor GhostsSiri HustvedtWriting Letters to Ghosts: On Meena Alexander's Posthumous MentorshipAshna AliPart III. The Traffic in Mentors: Horizontal Scripts Widening the Way: An Interview with Dána-Ain DavisNancy K. MillerNavigating Distance and Self-Doubt through Multiple MentorsAngela FrancisAll the Angry Young WomenElizabeth AlsopMentoring and #MeTooLeigh GilmoreThe Mentor as MirrorMelissa Coss AquinoAmong FriendsSarah ChihayaA Chorus, Not a MonologueMelissa DuclosThe Group (Text), or the Small StuffSarah BlackwoodOn Leaning OutLaura LimonicA Special Place in Hell: Women Helping Women and the Professionalization of Female MentorshipAngela Veronica Wong

"In an era overtly hostile to academic freedom, in which a spate of state initiatives have restricted educators' ability to teach race and Indigeneity, and gender and sexuality, what if we were to reimagine mentorship as reciprocal relationships that draw strength from community and a collective vision of change? In its invitation to reconceive not just how we mentor but also the elite professional boundaries of the concept lies the promise of this anthology and its radical potential." — Biography"I picked up Feminists Reclaim Mentorship expecting reminiscences about boys'-club academia, open-secret sexual harassers, older women hardened by their own ascents to power, commitments to reimagining old and broken systems, communities of peer mentors, and reiterations of the importance of reciprocity and listening. I was not expecting such a thoughtful, ambivalent, and sharp book; not expecting to be forced to put it down in order to think deeply about the mentors I've had, the almost-mentors I wish I'd had, my mother mentors and peer mentors; not expecting to end up less sure than ever about the right way forward or even the meaning of the word. In short, I underestimated this book. Feminists Reclaim Mentorship has teeth." — Maya von Ziegesar, WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly"The editors of Reclaiming Feminist Mentorship span a remarkable reach, crossing, intermixing—intergenerational, interracial, interdisciplinary, LGBTQ, inter-media-platform. Towering above this expanse of views, voices, positions, sweet and bitter sentiments, light and darkling, are the individual stories, like Scheherazade's, irresistible, each a teaching moment, their collective brilliance resetting for the twenty-first century the classic male hierarchy of binary patronage. You turn the pages, mesmerized by insights, gripes, confessions, undercover tales, the entirety composed by the marvelous writers who have trodden their own version of the mentoring cycle." — Shirley Geok-lin Lim, author of Among the White Moon Faces"We need pioneers. Feminists Reclaim Mentorship is a revelatory, pioneering text. A rich diversity of voices tells us how women with power and authority can support other women in the future. These voices also warn us about the failures to have done so. Their essays are angry, sorrowful, poignant, loving, and hopeful. In a cruel, callous, and predatory world, women—and men—need to help each other out with common sense, care for our differences, imagination, and grace. I am grateful to Nancy K. Miller and Tahneer Oksman for being our mentors in marking out paths toward a better future." — Catharine R. Stimpson, Professor and Dean Emerita, New York University"An excellent collection—diverse in style, voice, perspective, and context. While many contributors come from academia and the literary world, their writing touches on a range of experiences (mothering, therapy, military service) and fields (disability studies, Aboriginal studies) and are full of evocative formulations (horizontal mentorship, collaborative mentorship) that will resonate more broadly. Feminists Reclaim Mentorship makes clear both the persistence of old professional hierarchies and the potential for new, more equitable relationships across generations." — Nan Bauer-Maglin, coeditor of Staging Women's Lives in Academia: Gendered Life Stages in Language and Literature Workplaces"The generation of feminist scholars who created the field of Women's Studies were marked by the experience of having intellectually come of age 'when men were the only models we had,' as Carolyn Heilbrun put it in her book of that name. Many of these scholars later dedicated themselves to providing feminist mentorship for their own students, creating a mode of apprenticeship that has now served as a thread connecting several generations of women in and beyond the academy. In this richly engaging collection of essays, scholars and writers share their experiences of mentoring and being mentored—intellectually foundational, sometimes fractious, often deeply felt."—Ari M. Brostoff, culture editor at Jewish Currents and author of Missing Time: Essays