Feminist Writer, Researcher, Activist
“The path toward a feminist future and a more just world has always been long and tortured.
But it has never been abandoned.”
Susan McGee Bailey directed Wellesley Centers for Women for 25 years before retiring to spend more time with her special-needs daughter, Amy, and study creative nonfiction at Grub Street in Boston. She completed Grub’s year-long Memoir Incubator in 2016. Her work has appeared in Boston Globe Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Gulf Stream, and Manifest Station, among others. She has held residencies at The Virginia Center for Culture and the Arts and Ragdale.
The Education of a Feminist
The Education of a Feminist puts a personal face on the unresolved fight for social justice and human rights. As a young woman, Susan traveled the world, married, and moved to Colombia, determined to work on behalf of women, ideas seeded in childhood by an elderly, neighborhood artist. Her life changed when her daughter Amy was born with physical and developmental challenges. Susan returned home with Amy but without her husband. The memoir weaves fifty years of feminist history with Susan’s struggle as a single mother determined to care for Amy without abandoning a feminist career.
“Change comes hard, child, very hard. It scares people. Don’t you ever let it scare you.”
— Miss Georgianna Fulton, 1869-1967
A never-forgotten quote from Susan’s childhood friend