Oct09 25 Years!
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CELEBRATING 25 YEARS! OCT09 by V i V i a n D aV i s CSW Mona Simpson Q&A wiTh The besTselling nOVELIST And PROFESSOR of english Mona Simpson writes novels. Her 1987 sequel: The Lost Father, published in 1992. child. That same year Granta named Simpson debut, Anywhere But Here, follows Adele In it, Simpson’s character searches for her one of America’s Best Young Novelists. In and Ann August, a mother and daughter Egyptian father, who’s been absent all her 2000, Simpson published Off Keck Road, a who move from the Midwest to Los Angeles life, and her quest takes her to New York novel about a small town spinster, a man who in search of a less ordinary life. The novel City and eventually, Egypt. Four years later, has always been in her life, and a young girl, went on to be a national bestseller, winning Simpson returned with A Regular Guy (1996), who completes the odd triangle. This work the Whiting Award in 1986, catapulting the another work that limns the father-daughter was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. author into the literary spotlight. Simpson connection, this time between a Silicon Valley A fascination with places and the people followed her first novel’s success with a millionaire and his estranged, illegitimate who inhabit them characterizes Simpson’s 1 toc OCT09 2 OCT09 25th Anniversary Year: Upcoming Highlights This year marks OUr 25Th anniVersary!! sideration for a number grants, includ- I hope you will all join us for CSW’s birthday CSW has countless achievements to its credit ing a Haynes foundation grant. party. It will be held on February 22nd and over the past 25 years, all made possible will feature noted feminist historian Joan through the dedication and contributions of • AY 2008-09, was the first year CSW Scott, who will speak on the history and its former directors, affiliated faculty, stu- launched the Irving and Jean Stone importance of feminist research centers and dents, staff, and supporters. This year, we are Graduate Student fellowship awards women’s studies’ programs. Her talk will be also celebrating several notable milestones program, granting a recruitment fellow- followed by birthday cake and dance music and accomplishments: ship to an incoming Women’s Studies that specifically speaks to our feminist mis- student and awarding five Dissertation sion (think Aretha Franklin and M.I.A.). • This summer, we completed our two-year Year Fellowships in collaboration with Another anniversary highlight this year, Community Partnership grant with the Graduate Division to students whose re- of particular interest to graduate students, June L Mazer Lesbian Archives, process- search focuses on our mission issues of will be the plenary for Thinking Gender. ing and digitizing five of their major Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Issues. Co-sponsored by the four ethnic studies collections and also facilitating an ongo- research centers (each is celebrating their ing, long-term partnership between the • This year, CSW will be launching our 40th anniversary), the plenary will feature Mazer and the UCLA Library. Graduate Student Initiative that formal- graduate student papers on gender and izes some of the services we already ethnicity and a secret guest respondent • CSW’s research project, Women’s Social provide to graduate students and intro- (whose name we will reveal as soon as we Movements in Los Angeles 1960 to 1999 duces some new programs. Details will get the event set up). And we will have an (WSMALA), received generous funding be forthcoming in the next issue of the even larger venue this year so that there will from a donor and is currently under con- newsletter. be seating for everyone! 3 OCT09 faculty seminars, the first, on November 4th highlighting the work of Professor Ruth Milkman on “Women and the LA Immigrant Rights Movement” and the second, in Spring quarter, featuring Professor Vivian Sobchack, whose title has yet to be determined, but will focus on Barbra Streisand. As you can tell from this line up, we have a very exciting year planned. Please plan on joining us in our celebrations. That’s the good news. I hardly need to tell you that in addition to our celebrations this year, CSW also faces, as does every unit at UCLA, considerable challenges in confront- ing the state budget crisis. We are doing everything we can to advance our mission – which is as vital and necessary as at any time in the center’s history. You can help by Here at CSW we have an important roll to In addition to these and other anniversary staying involved, paying attention to what is play in that regard, and we are committed to events, CSW will also have a speaker’s series going on and letting your voice be heard. It contributing our part, and we look forward on “Gender and Body Size” in Winter quarter, is vital that we all act to protect the UC as a to your participation in that effort through guest-curated by Professor Abigail Saguy in world-class public research university dedi- the year. Sociology which promises to be very excit- cated to access, public service, and diversity. ing. We will also have two senior feminist — kathleen mchugh 4 Mona Simpson, continued from page 1 oeuvre. Her novels dramatize human She also plays an active part in organizing the conscious and unconscious beliefs. Tolstoy bonds and the geographic sensibilities that Friends of English and Hammer Museum’s didn’t write about kids whose fathers were inform them: mothers and daughters in the popular “Some Favorite Writers” series, a numbers on index cards in sperm banks or heartland, daughters and fathers in Egypt, regular event that brings notable literary about blended families. I have first cousins women and men in a small Wisconsin talents right into the heart of Westwood. who had arranged marriages. One of my community. Her upcoming novel, My On a recent summer afternoon, I sat down cousins who married on his own, while in Hollywood (Knopf, Spring 2010), depicts the in a Brentwood coffee shop with Simpson graduate school here in the States, later upstairs/downstairs ironies, enmities, and to talk about her work and, in particular, The divorced and let his mother pick his bride strange affections between a community American Cousins. the next time. At least in my family, though, of immigrant nannies and their employers the arranged marriages I witnessed felt less in contemporary Los Angeles. Presently, Your current project is about marriages: like the arranged marriages one encounters traditional and nontraditional. The topic is Simpson has begun a story about the lives timely given our current political climate. in A Passage to India or even in the work of and loves of Diaspora Arabs in Europe, the The passage of Proposition 8 last November Jhumpa Lahiri. They more closely resembled Gulf, and the United States, and of their both intensified the debate over same-sex a really well run on-line dating service. marriage and brought to the fore questions more assimilated, half-American cousins. In other words, the family sought suitable about what counts as “family.” How does Considering traditional and non-traditional this context figure into your thinking about a grooms for my intelligent young cousin, marriages and contemporary divorce, novel like The American Cousins? arranged with the families to meet, and then Simpson’s novel aims to look at what it paid an orchestrated formal visit. At the means to love and to marry in the twenty-first Love, courtship, and marriage have always end of one of these vetting sessions, which century. been essential elements of the novel. Without had involved six family members flying to Not only a bestselling novelist, Simpson is those plots the novel as a genre may not exist. another part of the country where the young also a Professor in the Department of English, Domestic daily life is a perennial subject for man attended medical school, my cousin where she teaches workshops on creative fiction, though the how-to elements change decided the boy was too short. We will not writing to swarms of eager undergraduates. with every era. People fell in love and married go forward, my father said, to the father of a hundred years ago, but we do those things in a way that reflects our culture and our OCT09 5 CSupdateW toc the medical student. And another candidate any given place. I’ve always been struck by to me about Hardy in a way I’d find totally was found, researched, and presented. This the description of Westwood in Anywhere fascinating and even intimidating. But you But Here: the apartment buildings, the car happened many times. know how it is with books. If you read it five models, the menu at Hamburger Hamlet. Given that you write about Los Angeles in years ago, it’s not palpably alive in your mind. How did you begin your research for the such detail, I have to ask if you like living What’s so great about teaching is that you read novel? Academics are often committed to here. It’s one of those cities that people something you’re excited about or troubled the idea of toiling away in the archives or seem to love or hate. working out in the field, compiling textual by and you give it to fifteen students and you evidence or hard data. What is your process discuss it that week. You’ve all just read the as a fiction writer? I’ve felt everything towards Los Angeles: same thing and they care about the forms and I’ve loved it.