The Road from Coorain (book)

Last updated

The Road from Coorain is a 1989 memoir by Jill Ker Conway.

Contents

The Road from Coorain was the first in Conway's trilogy of memoirs. True North (1994) is the story of her immigration to America in pursuit of intellectual fulfilment and a Harvard PhD in history. A Woman's Education (2001) tells the story of her move from history professor at the University of Toronto to the Presidency of Smith College. [1]

Synopsis

The book begins on the sheep station in the western grasslands of New South Wales, Australia, where Conway was born, 30,000 acres of grazing land that her parents settled in 1929. A severe drought and her father's death drove the family to Sydney, where Conway's struggle to get an education and make something of herself began. [2] [3] [4]

Adaptation

A television film adaptation of The Road from Coorain was broadcast on the ABC in 2002. [5]

Related Research Articles

Halle Berry American actress

Halle Maria Berry is an American actress. Born to an American father and English mother, Berry began her career as a model and entered several beauty contests, finishing as the first runner-up in the Miss USA pageant and coming in sixth in the Miss World 1986. Her breakthrough film role was in the romantic comedy Boomerang (1992), alongside Eddie Murphy, which led to roles in films, such as the family comedy The Flintstones (1994), the political comedy-drama Bulworth (1998) and the television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999), for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award.

Louisa May Alcott American novelist (1832–1888)

Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet best known as the author of the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many well-known intellectuals of the day, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Natalie Portman Israeli-American actress

Natalie Portman is an Israeli-born American actress. With an extensive career in film since her teenage years, she has starred in various blockbusters and independent films, for which she has received multiple accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and two Golden Globe Awards.

Toni Morrison American novelist, essayist and academic (1931–2019)

Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

Mira Nair Indian-American filmmaker

Mira Nair is an Indian-American filmmaker based in New York City. Her production company, Mirabai Films, specializes in films for international audiences on Indian society, whether in the economic, social or cultural spheres. Among her best known films are Mississippi Masala, Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love, The Namesake, the Golden Lion winning Monsoon Wedding, and Salaam Bombay!, which received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language.

Elaine Chao 18th United States secretary of transportation and 24th United States secretary of labor

Elaine Lan Chao is an American businesswoman and government official. A member of the Republican Party, Chao served as the 18th Secretary of Transportation in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2021, and as the 24th Secretary of Labor in the Bush administration from 2001 to 2009.

Mary Steenburgen American actress

Mary Nell Steenburgen is an American actress, comedian, singer, and songwriter. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture for playing the role of Lynda Dummar in Jonathan Demme's 1980 film Melvin and Howard.

Mira Sorvino American actress

Mira Katherine Sorvino is an American actress. She won the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite (1995).

Elizabeth McGovern American actress and musician (born 1961)

Elizabeth Lee McGovern is an American actress and musician. She received an Academy Award nomination for her role as Evelyn Nesbit in the 1981 film Ragtime. She is also known for her performance as Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham, in the British drama series Downton Abbey, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award. Her other films include Ordinary People (1980), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), The Wings of the Dove (1997), and The Chaperone (2018).

Lynn Conway American computer scientist and electrical engineer

Lynn Ann Conway is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer, inventor, and transgender activist.

Jill Ker Conway

Jill Ker Conway was an Australian-American scholar and author. Well known for her autobiographies, in particular her first memoir, The Road from Coorain, she also was Smith College's first woman president (1975–1985) and most recently served as a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004 she was designated a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project. She was a recipient of the National Humanities Medal.

Rashida Jones American actress, writer, and producer

Rashida Leah Jones is an American actress, director, writer, and producer. Jones appeared as Louisa Fenn on the Fox drama series Boston Public (2000–2002), as Karen Filippelli on the NBC comedy series The Office (2006–2013), and as Ann Perkins on the NBC comedy series Parks and Recreation (2009–2015). From 2016 to 2019, Jones starred as the lead eponymous role in the TBS comedy series Angie Tribeca, and in 2020, Jones starred as Joya Barris in the Netflix series #blackAF.

Claudia Goldin American economist

Claudia Goldin is an American economic historian and labor economist who is currently the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University. She is a co-director of the NBER's Gender in the Economy Study Group and was the director of the NBER’s Development of the American Economy program from 1989 to 2017. Goldin's research covers a wide range of topics, including the female labor force, the gender gap in earnings, income inequality, technological change, education, and immigration. Most of her research interprets the present through the lens of the past and explores the origins of current issues of concern. Her recently completed book Career & Family: Women's Century-Long Journey toward Equity will be released October 5, 2021.

Harvard University Private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world.

Stephen David Conway SCP is a British Anglican bishop. Since December 2010, he has been the Bishop of Ely. From 2006 to 2010, he was the Bishop of Ramsbury, an area bishop and then suffragan bishop of the Diocese of Salisbury.

Jill Lepore American historian

Jill Lepore is an American historian and journalist. She is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she has contributed since 2005. She writes about American history, law, literature, and politics.

Neema Barnette is an American film director, and the first African-American woman to direct a primetime sitcom. Barnette was the first African-American woman to get a three-picture deal with Sony. Since then, she accumulated a number of awards, including a Peabody, an Emmy and NAACP Image Award.

The Road From Coorain is the film adaptation of Jill Ker Conway's memoir of the same name. It was awarded an AFI award, Best Telefeature, Mini Series or Short Run Series in 2002.

Eve Louise Ewing is a sociologist, author, poet, and visual artist from Chicago, Illinois. Ewing is an assistant professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. Her academic research in the sociology of education includes her 2018 book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side, a study of school closures in Chicago. She is the former editor at Seven Scribes and the author of the poetry collection Electric Arches which was released in September 2017. In 2019, she published 1919, a poetry collection centered around the Chicago race riot of 1919. Additionally, Ewing is the author of the Ironheart comic book series for Marvel centered on the young heroine Riri Williams.

Marie Conway Oemler was an American author from Georgia. She wrote numerous books and was a contributor to publications including The Century Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, Women's Home Companion, and Ladies Home Journal. Her books Slippy McGee and A Woman Named Smith are part of the Library of Congress Collection and have been digitized. Three films have been adapted from her novels.

References

  1. Eisenmann, Linda (June 2002). "One Woman's Education". Harvard Magazine. Retrieved 7 January 2020.
  2. Klinkenborg, Verlyn (7 May 1989). "The Call of the wind and the Kookaburra". New York Times.
  3. Cary, Alice (1 August 1993). "The Road from Coorain". Boston Herald.
  4. Hospital, Jeanette Turner (11 June 1989). "From the Outback to the Grail; The Road from Cooorain". Los Angeles Times.
  5. "The Road from Coorain – review | cast and crew, movie star rating and where to watch film on TV and online". Radio Times. Retrieved 2020-01-08.