From the pages of our Spring 2023 Issue
Letty Cottin Pogrebin continues to travel extensively, promoting her latest book, Shanda: A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy. The writer, lecturer, and social activist is a founding editor of Ms. magazine. We sat down with Pogrebin and talked about women’s rights, the Feminist Seder, and her long history in the Berkshires.
How do you keep in touch with your audience? I always answer readers’ emails. I post a quirky newsletter in which I blow off steam; flag often overlooked news items, books, film, theatre, and political events; spotlight social justice groups; and try to foment activism on behalf of issues I care about (notably women’s equality, national politics, Jewish Americans, and the advancement of Israeli-Palestinian peace). I also keep in touch through my books and essays, the column I’ve been contributing to Moment magazine for more than 30 years, and lots of public speaking gigs around the country.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Marlo Thomas & Gloria Steinem, three of the four founding mothers of the Ms. Foundation for Women. (Not pictured is Pat Carbine) mid-1970s. Courtesy Letty Cottin Pogrebin.
Tell me about International Women’s Day on March 8 and Women’s History Month. International Women’s Day commemorates March 8, 1857, the day female textile workers in New York City took to the streets en masse to protest unfair working conditions and demand higher wages and a shorter workweek. A hundred years later, Congress established March as National Women’s History Month in perpetuity with the aim of integrating “herstory” into history. That was nice of them but, in my view, also was kind of patronizing. After centuries of discrimination and erasure, we should be honoring women’s contributions to American society every month of the year.
What do you do to mark this special time? The same thing I do the rest of the year—I try to learn about women whose lives and work have been undervalued, devalued, forgotten, or utterly lost to posterity.
Please tell us the background of the Feminist Seder. The Feminist Seder, of which I was a co-founder in 1976, was never intended to substitute for the traditional Passover Seder observed in Jewish homes around the world. It was meant as a reparative innovation, an expansion and deepening of our heritage. Our feminist ceremonies and symbols, many of them created by our seder leader and gifted ritualist E.M. Broner, simply weave women’s feelings and experiences into the story of the Exodus. At our feminist seder, which has been replicated by women around the world, we equate the struggle for women’s dignity and equality with the Israelites’ liberation from bondage and subsequent journey to the Promised Land. At the Feminist Seder, along with the cup for Elijah the prophet, we place a goblet of water on the table in honor of Miriam, the prophet and sister of Moses. We recite the Ten Plagues, not the punishments visited by God on the Pharaoh and the ancient Egyptians (blood, frogs, lice, etc.), but the plagues inflicted by the patriarchy (misogyny, male supremacy, discrimination, rape, violence). This year, Passover starts at sundown on Wednesday April 5, and ends at sundown on Thursday, April 13. Sometime during those eight days, my colleagues and I will conduct our 47th Feminist Seder using as our text The Women’s Haggadah by E.M. Broner and Naomi Nimrod. Any of your readers can do the same.
Why did you write Shanda? I wanted to capture what it was like to grow up in the mid-20th century in the midst of a large extended family of immigrant Jews who were fiercely determined to become “real Americans” and deathly afraid of being shamed for their perceived flaws and inadequacies. “Shanda” means “shame” in Yid- dish. My parents and an amazing number of my relatives were ashamed of everything from their poverty, foreign accents, physical or mental illnesses, to transgressions of sexual, religious, or social norms. Fear of the shanda inspired my parents in particular to spin an intricate web of secrecy that, when divulged, shook my trust in the adult world. Fear of the shanda compelled them to cover up, lie about, or reinvent large parts of their lives, but it also motivated them to strive for perfection, excellence, and achievement. Regardless of readers’ background or culture, this book seems to strike close to the bone.
What are some of the stories that people have brought to you during the book talks? My own candor gives people permission to offer up their own secrets. One middle-aged man confided that he’d recently discovered his uncle was really his father. And after a talk of mine in Florida, a woman came up to me and admitted that she never loved her husband; she’d married him because she was pregnant and too afraid to have an illegal abortion. Her children have no idea.
How did Ms. magazine start? I’m one of the magazine’s six co-founders, thanks to my having met Gloria Steinem in the summer of 1971 at the founding conference of the National Women’s Political Caucus. After we spent several hours working together that weekend, Gloria invited me to join her and a few other feminist writers and editors in creating an independent mass market magazine that, uniquely, would be owned and edited by women; a national feminist magazine that would take women seriously and showcase the voices, ideas, and activities of the burgeoning movement that was then called “women’s lib.” The Preview issue of Ms., with its iconic red cover and drawing of a blue-toned, multi-armed Indian goddess—each of her hands holding an object symbolizing women’s multiple roles and responsibilities—was published in January 1972. We editors expected it would be available on newsstands for eight weeks but, to our astonishment and that of the disbelieving media critics, the issue sold out in eight days, all over the country! Recently, a few of us from the founding generation organized a reunion of decades worth of Ms. contributors—writers, editors, art directors, and other staffers—to celebrate the magazine’s 50th anniversary. And to thank the goddess that, having evolved with the times, it’s still going strong.
Have women’s rights improved? We’ve made tremendous progress in some areas, but as we learned last year, women’s rights are never secure. If the Supreme Court could reverse Roe v. Wade and, with a stroke, deny women a 50-year-old Constitutional guarantee—though reproductive freedom was conditional and never a full-scaled guarantee; conservative have been eroding Roe for decades—how can any American trust in the permanence of legal protections once considered sacrosanct? Bottom line: The fight goes on.
When did you first come to the Berkshires? The summer of 1959. I’m from New York, but my roommate at Brandeis University hailed from North Adams. She brought me up here to enjoy classical music at Tanglewood and folk and jazz performers at the late, lamented Music Inn. If memory serves, Josh White was the headliner at the Potting Shed that weekend.
And what do you love most about here? The natural beauty, the cultural riches, the Stockbridge Bowl, and all the wonderful friendships we’ve made since we bought our house in 2009.
Pogrebin has a number of book talks coming up, several in the Berkshires. Find them at lettycottinpogrebin.com. She is a past president and longtime board member of the Authors Guild. The second annual Words, Ideas, and Thinkers (WIT) Festival is September 21–23 at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox. Check for updates at authors-guild.org/event/2023-wit-festival.
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