By Jill Yesko, University Relations
Barbara Moran (photo by Susan Mullally)
Author Barbara Moran will give voice to a “silent generation” of women with a reading at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 24, in the Alumni House.
Her new book – “Voices of the Silent Generation: Strong Women Tell Their Stories” – describes the background of women who came of age in the 1950s, before feminism or civil rights laws. It contains oral histories of 17 women, including North Carolinians Shirley Frye, Ruth Revels, Doris Betts, Velma Gibson Watts and Gay Cheney.
N.C. Poet Laureate Emeritus Fred Chappell called it “a volume that throbs with life” and “exhilarating.” A “brilliant book,” declared The Pilot newspaper of Southern Pines.
In a program free and open to the public, Moran will read from her book and take questions from the audience. Copies will be available for purchase, and a book signing will follow the reading.
The event in the Virginia Dare Room is sponsored by University Libraries, the Department of History, and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program.
The book begins: “Dismissed as the silent generation, women who began their adult lives in the 1950s were deemed politically voiceless, dependent on men for self-definition, lacking in professional ambition, content with house and hearth. In later years, younger feminists pitied the last wave of American women to be psychologically shackled by low expectations, society’s and their own.”
Moran graduated from Cornell University and taught at colleges in Boston and Ann Arbor. A noted storyteller, she has also published reviews, poetry and essays. She lived on the UNCG campus from 1979-94, when her husband, Bill Moran, was chancellor.
The stories in the book serve an important purpose, Moran told The Pilot. “In hearing each other’s stories, we find the strength to press on, to discover what we most need to know: something of what life may offer, something of what will be required.”
For further information contact the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at (336) 334-5673.
