Vivian Gornick

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Vivian Gornick
Vivian Gornick (2018) - version 2.jpg
Gornick in 2018
Born (1935-06-14) June 14, 1935 (age 90)
The Bronx, New York City, U.S.
Occupation
  • Author
  • memoirist
  • essayist
Education
Subject Cultural history, memoir

Vivian Gornick (born June 14, 1935) [1] [2] is an American radical feminist critic, journalist, essayist, and memoirist.

Contents

Early life and education

Vivian Gornick was born on June 14, 1935, in New York City to working-class Jewish immigrant parents from Ukraine. She was raised a "red diaper baby" in a tenement apartment, where her parents' Communist political ideals shaped her daily life, with newspapers like the Daily Worker and Morgen Freiheit as household staples. [3] Her father, Louis, worked as a presser in a garment factory. Her mother, Bess, took an office job during World War II. This experience exposed Gornick to shifting gender dynamics from a young age, which would help shape her aspirations for women's rights in the future. [4] In 1957, Gornick received a bachelor of arts degree from City College of New York and in 1960 a master of arts degree from New York University. [5]

Career

Gornick was a reporter for The Village Voice from 1969 to 1977. [2] Her journalistic work has also appeared in The New York Times , The Nation , Atlantic Monthly , and many other publications.

In 1969, the radical feminist group New York Radical Feminists was founded by Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt; [6] : 186  Firestone's and Koedt's desire to start this new group was aided by Gornick's 1969 Village Voice essay, "The Next Great Moment in History Is Theirs". At the end of the essay she announced the formation of the group, including a contact address and phone number, which raised considerable national interest from prospective members. [6] : 187  [7]

Gornick has published over a dozen books; the most recent, Taking a Long Look: Essays on Culture, Literature, and Feminism in Our Time, appeared in 2021. In that same year, she was awarded the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for nonfiction. [8]

Gornick taught writing at The New School. For the 2007–2008 academic year, she was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, and in 2015 she served as the Bedell Distinguished Visiting Professor in the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program. [9]

Bibliography

Books

  • Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness (1971; edited with Barbara K. Moran)
  • In Search of Ali Mahmoud: an American Woman in Egypt (1973, Saturday Review Press) (Nominated for the 1974 National Book Award)
  • The Romance of American Communism (1977, Basic Books; new edition 2020, Verso) [10]
  • Essays in Feminism (1978, Harper & Row)
  • Women in Science: Portraits from a World in Transition (1983, Simon & Schuster) [11]
  • Fierce Attachments: A Memoir (1987, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  • Approaching Eye Level (1996, Beacon Press)
  • The End of the Novel of Love (1997, Beacon Press; Nominated for the 1997 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism)
  • The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative (2001, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  • The Solitude of Self: Thinking About Elizabeth Cady Stanton (2005, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  • The Men in My Life (2008, MIT Press; National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for criticism)
  • Women in Science: Then and Now (2009, The Feminist Press at CUNY)
  • The Ancient Dream (Sep/Oct 2010, Boston Review)
  • Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life. (2011, Yale University Press; Finalist for the 2011 National Jewish Book Award)
  • The Odd Woman and the City (May 2015, Farrar, Straus and Giroux) [12]
  • Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader (2020, Farrar, Straus and Giroux) [13]
  • Taking a Long Look: Essays on Culture, Literature, and Feminism in Our Time (2021, Verso) [14]

Essays and reporting

  • "What Independence Has Come to Mean to Me" (2002) The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth about Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood and Marriage. William Morrow. ISBN 978-0060936464

Book reviews

YearReview articleWork(s) reviewed
2017Gornick, Vivian (January–February 2017). "Tied in knots: The modern marriage is an elaborate feat of performance". The New Republic. 248 (1–2): 56–58. Kristeva, Julia & Philippe Sollers. Marriage As a Fine Art. New York: Columbia University Press.

References

  1. ↑ "Library of Congress authority file". loc.gov. Archived from the original on July 25, 2017. Retrieved June 2, 2013.
  2. 1 2 Grauer, Tresa. "Vivian Gornick". Jewish Women's Archives Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on September 24, 2016. Retrieved July 24, 2017.
  3. ↑ Gornick, Vivian (April 3, 2020). "What Endures of the Romance of American Communism" . New York Review of Books .
  4. ↑ Antler, Joyce. "Vivian Gornick". Jewish Women's Archive. Archived from the original on September 10, 2025. Retrieved October 1, 2025.
  5. ↑ Blair, Elaine (Winter 2014). "Vivian Gornick, The Art of Memoir No. 2". The Paris Review. Archived from the original on July 11, 2017. Retrieved July 24, 2017.
  6. 1 2 Echols, Alice (1990). Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–75. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 186–187. ISBN   0-8166-1787-2 . Retrieved July 15, 2017.
  7. ↑ Gornick, Vivian (November 27, 1969). "The Next Great Moment in History Is Theirs". The Village Voice . (Reprinted in: V Gornick. (1978). Essays in Feminism. Harper and Row. ISBN   0-06-011627-7.)
  8. ↑ "Windham-Campbell Prize recipients announced". Books+Publishing. March 23, 2021. Retrieved March 25, 2021.
  9. ↑ "Visiting Writers Series". Department of English, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, The University of Iowa. July 24, 2017. Archived from the original on April 9, 2015. Retrieved April 13, 2016.
  10. ↑ Watling, Sarah (May 1, 2020). "The Romance of American Communism by Vivian Gornick review – a flawed masterpiece". The Guardian .
  11. ↑ Gornick, Vivian (January 1, 1983). Women in Science: Portraits from a World in Transition . Simon & Schuster. ISBN   9780671417383.
  12. ↑ "Vivian Gornick – biography". Department of English, The University of Iowa. Archived from the original on May 30, 2015. Retrieved April 13, 2016.
  13. ↑ "Book Marks reviews of Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader by Vivian Gornick". Book Marks. Retrieved January 31, 2020.
  14. ↑ "Taking a Long Look: Essays on Culture, Literature, and Feminism in Our Time, by Vivian Gornick" VersoBooks.com. Retrieved 2022-03-28.
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