I Rode the Second Wave: A Feminist Memoir is an autobiographical story told in poetry through the eyes of a woman whose life paralleled the second wave of feminism, a movement that began in the 1960’s and focused on equal opportunities and equal pay for women.
The second wave changed the expectations of women from the homemakers of the 1950’s to career women. The author was a freshman in college in 1962 determined to enter the workforce in a professional position. After completing her graduate degree in 1969, she was rebuffed in job interviews by men who assumed she would leave her job soon after she married and had children. She accepted a job in an office where she was the only professional woman. She married in 1970, had her first child in 1976 and her second in 1984. She worked for 41 years, retiring in 2010.
Placing her story in the context of women’s marches and feminist goals, the author tells how she grew up in a world that expected women to become homemakers and how she combined her desire for a professional career with marriage and motherhood at a time when mothers with careers were just starting to be accepted in our culture.
Published by Atmosphere Press, November 2022.
Look for it wherever books are sold, including: Bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble, Amazon
Look for it wherever books are sold, including: Bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble, Amazon
Fran loves Pythagoras because his theorem always works, whereas life does not offer much that is certain. In her book The Poet Who Loves Pythagoras, you'll read poems like “Ice Cubes,” that explain relative density as you watch cubes float in your glass of scotch. Algebra helps you decide whether to buy that candy bar. Percentages are simply fractions with fancy symbols. With titles like “Poetry is a Word Problem,” “Define Infinity,” and “Solve My Life,” these poems will have you appreciating poetry, math, and science from a refreshingly different perspective.
Poet Sandra Beasley says of this book, “Readers who prize the consideration of big questions, balanced against agile specificity of phrase, will delight in this quirky collection.”
Poet Jona Colson says of Fran’s book, “In the aptly titled collection, The Poet Who Loves Pythagoras, Fran Abrams gives us a surprising perspective: the poet and the mathematician. In the first poem ‘Pythagorean Theorem,’ she writes, ‘Few things in life are certain,’ but we are certain of her talent and craft.”
Published by Finishing Line Press, March 2023.