The Equivalents

February 15, 2020
The story of the first scholars to participate in a "messy experiment" at Harvard's Radcliffe college. The 1950s and '60s were tough for educated women, especially those who wanted to be writers or artists. Men dominated academia and literature, and women were expected to stay home and care for their husbands and children. So in 1960, microbiologist Mary Ingraham Bunting, Radcliffe president and mother of four, created the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study, a fellowship program to provide a stipend and office space to help "intellectually displaced women" become scholars and artists while also caring for a family. In her debut, Doherty, who teaches writing at Harvard, tells the story of several of the Institute's first scholars, women who called themselves the Equivalents because the Institute "required that applicants have either a doctorate or 'the equivalent' in creative achievement." The author focuses on three of them: Anne Sexton, who "came from New England wealth" yet endured demons that precipitated several suicide attempts; fellow poet Maxine Kumin, with whom Sexton forged an enduring friendship even though Kumin came from a less privileged background; and writer Tillie Olsen, "a first-generation, working-class American, an itinerant, and an agitator" who named her first daughter Karla after Karl Marx and was the first among her cohort to note that "the true struggle was the class struggle"--i.e., not every woman "had the time, resources, and education" to immerse themselves in creative endeavors. Other Institute scholars, such as sculptor Marianna Pineda and painter Barbara Swan, are also mentioned. Digressions about women peripherally connected to the scholars may have been an attempt to place the graduates' post-Institute work in a broader perspective, but it feels as if Doherty didn't have enough material about these scholars to fill an entire volume. When she sticks to her subject, the book is superb, especially when she recounts Sexton's personal struggles and offers close analyses of each author's works. A welcome spotlight on an overdue "experiment."

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Starred review from February 17, 2020
Harvard University lecturer Doherty debuts with an elegant, novelistic history of the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study and its influence on the lives and careers of five female artists and the women’s movement at large. Founded by the president of Radcliffe College in 1960, the institute accepted women with PhDs or “the equivalent,” providing them with a stipend, library access, a private office, and “a community of the like-minded.” Doherty centers her account on a group of friends and collaborators who attended the institute from 1961 to 1963: poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin, writer and communist organizer Tillie Olsen, painter Barbara Swan, and sculptor Marianna Pineda. Though the complex yet creatively fruitful relationship between Sexton and Kumin takes center stage, Olsen emerges as “the most politically conscious” member of the group, a forceful critic of the institute’s premise that motherhood and intellectual work were mutually sustaining, who anticipated emerging fault lines within the women’s movement at the intersections of race, class, and gender. Doherty’s prose dazzles, and she skillfully integrates her copious research into the narrative while toggling between biographical, creative, and political matters. This empathetic, wide-angled portrait will resonate with fans of the individual artists as well as feminists and readers of women’s history.

April 1, 2020

In 1960, Radcliffe College president Mary Ingraham Bunting established the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study, offering paid fellowships to women looking to restart stalled scholarly or artistic careers. Historian Doherty's study of the early years of the institute generally centers on a group of women who called themselves the "Equivalents"--poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin, writer Tillie Olson, painter Barbara Swan, and sculptor Marianna Pineda--as each had been accepted into the school's program for possessing the "equivalent" of a doctorate in creative achievement. The work also alternates between facets of the institute and its fellows: the difficulties of women seeking creative careers in the mid-20th century; the fellows' responses to the beginnings of second-wave feminism; the institute's complex relationship to underprivileged women and women of color; and the benefit of providing a supportive community for women's scholarly pursuits. VERDICT Doherty's overall galvanizing look at a little-explored conjunction of critical feminist voices should incite provocative historical context to current-day discussions around the need for more support of women's intellectual work.--Kathleen McCallister, William & Mary Libs., Williamsburg, VA

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Starred review from May 1, 2020
Mary Ingraham Bunting, a microbiologist, was president of Radcliffe, the women's college aligned with Harvard, when she innovated a way to support women who had earned a degree but felt that as wives and mothers they couldn't pursue their dreams of becoming scholars or artists. The Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study opened in 1960 with 24 women fellows, each receiving a stipend (which some used for child care) and office space. Historian Doherty profiles Bunting and five of the inaugural participants: poets Maxine Kumin and Anne Sexton, writer and activist Tillie Olsen, painter Barbara Swan, and sculptor Marianna Pineda. They jokingly called themselves the Equivalents since, instead of academic qualifications, they had equivalent artistic training. They were close, but Doherty focuses on the most documented, complicated, and deeply consequential bond, that between Sexton and Kumin. Neighbors living similar lives, they were actually temperamental opposites, with extravagant, blazingly original, ultimately suicidal Sexton relying on reserved, masterful, and pragmatic Kumin. Doherty sets all of her magnetic subjects within a fresh assessment of the sexism of postwar and Cold War America, and celebrates the Equivalents for breaking ground for innovative, intimate creations by women. Doherty's vibrant curiosity and many-faceted expertise infuse this dynamic group biography with light and warmth. A perfect match for Andrea Barnet's Visionary Women (2018) and Mary Gabriel's Ninth Street Women (2018).Women in Focus: The 19th in 2020(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)