In Her Own Words: Women’s Memoirs from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States

Jill Ker Conway, author of one of the most celebrated memoirs of recent decades, is also the premier anthologist of women's autobiographical writing. In Her Own Words is Conway's distillation of women's experience from the British Commonwealth world she came from, compared with major themes in women's lives in the United States, which is now her home.

In this dazzling collection, we meet twelve remarkable women--from Shirley Chisholm, the West Indian-raised girl who became the first black woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress, to Janet Frame, the brilliant New Zealand writer who overcame involuntary treatment in a mental institution to write one of the archetypal analyses of the postcolonial experience. We learn how the world of politics and the private self intersect in the four offshoots of the old British world, and see how these women have made a difference--by their honesty, by the scale of their struggle for self-knowledge and autonomy, and by the power of their writing.

Includes writing from:

Patricia Adam-Smith Lillian Hellman
Rosemary Brown Dorothy Hewett
Kim Chernin Robin Hyde
Shirley Chisholm Dorothy Livesay
Lauris Edmond Sally Morgan
Janet Frame Gabrielle Roy

Jill Ker Conway was born in Hillston, New South Wales, Australia, graduated from the University of Sydney in 1958, and received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1969. In 1962 she married John Conway and moved with him to his native Canada. From 1964 to 1975 she taught at the University of Toronto, where she was also Vice President, before going to Smith College. Since 1985 she has been a visiting scholar and professor in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society. She serves on the boards of Nike, Merrill Lynch, and Colgate-Palmolive, and as Chairman of Lend Lease Corporation. She lives in Boston.