Wasserstein’s Real Life Stories Resonate With Audience

Kicking off a national book tour for her new collection of essays, Tony Award-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein spoke to an eager Simmons audience Tuesday night, May 1. With an infectious laugh and a flip of her wayward curly hair, Wasserstein said it was "especially fitting" that she unveil the book at Simmons.

"I learned how to find my own individual voice at a women’s college," said Wasserstein, a Mt. Holyoke graduate.

Wasserstein is best known for her work portraying real women in realistic situations. Her play "The Heidi Chronicles" received the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize for best play in 1988. Her other plays include "Isn’t it Romantic" and "The Sisters Rosensweig."

During the nearly two-hour talk, sponsored by Simmons’s Department of Women’s Studies and the Master’s Program in Gender/Cultural Studies, and New Words women’s bookstore, Wasserstein told of her childhood growing up in a Jewish family in New York. In between bits of revealing self-observations, some of which had audience members howling, Wasserstein described her journey as a writer. While she always enjoyed writing, it wasn’t until college that she seriously began to think about playwrighting. At the time, most women writers were considered "sensitive," she said. "I was never one of these sensitive people, I was sorta hearty."

In her latest collection of essays, Shiksa Goddess, Wasserstein tackles a number of subjects ranging from her mother, diets, and real estate, to her sister’s death, her struggle with fertility, and the premature birth of her daughter, Lucy Jane.

Writing — and essay writing in particular — said Wasserstein, requires careful observation. "I’m just trying to watch and reveal the character, and the character I write about the most is me.".

see also

Department of Women's Studies

Gender/Cultural Studies

 

 

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