Our Own Agendas
Autobiographical Essays by Women Associated with McGill University
Description
Twenty-eight women - students, professors, administrators, and graduates of McGill University - reflect on their lives. With emotions that range from humour to angst, they discuss the problems they encountered and the achievements they made. Coming from different cultures, environments, professions, and age groups, the authors of these essays have their own agendas and individual styles. Yet amid this diversity they deal with recurring themes that give vivid insights into what it means to be a woman in Canada in the 1990s. They write about relationships, careers, illness, children, sexuality, sexism, violence, religion, the arts, misfortune, and good luck. Monique Bégin, former minister of Health in Pierre Trudeau's cabinet, recounts her experiences in the male-dominated world of politics. Annie Iserhoff, a Cree teacher who was sent to residential schools as a child, describes her encounters with prejudice. Jane Poulson discloses the pain of going blind during her final year of medical studies and her bitter struggle to triumph over impossible odds.
Reviews
"Each woman's personal approach or tone clearly reflects her interpretation of her 'life experiences'; it is this facet of the book that gives Our Own Agendas its strength and, paradoxically, both its variety and its unity. The cumulative, and impressive, effect is one of keen intelligence, fierce determination articulated with varying degrees of courage, wry humour, self-recognition, and female 'angst.'" Lois M. Bewley, professor emerita, University of British Columbia. "The autobiographical essays are excellent. Our Own Agendas is more than a good read, it is an important social record of a broad spectrum of women who have overcome the practical and institutional pressures on women to defer and negate their educational ambitions." Helen Buss, English, University of Calgary.