Finding Fran

by Lois W. Banner

On a cool summer evening in the desert between Taos and Santa Fe, two women lean on pillows, sip coffee, and discuss their past. One is a professor of history and gender studies and has been a feminist and an agnostic throughout most of her adult life. The other is a devout Muslim of the mystical Sufi Order. What brings two such different women together? Attending high school in 1950s suburban Los Angeles, Lois Banner and Fran Huneke had been best friends, with their minds on books and boys. But while Banner became an academic feminist, Fran converted to Islam and moved to Egypt. Forty years later, Banner sought out her lost friend, hoping to understand why they had taken such different paths in life.

Banner charts the trajectories of the friends' diverging lives. Her search for clues to the origins of their opposing choices takes her to Los Angeles, New York, New Mexico, and to Egypt with Fran, where each woman re-creates the key moments of her life. As Banner finished her Ph. D. in history at Columbia and became swept up in the beginnings of academic feminism, Fran embarked on her own journey, joining the Lama Foundation, a spiritual community in New Mexico, and eventually converted to Islam. Ultimately, however, it is in childhood that Banner finds the roots of their differences. She uncovers the importance of female role models, showing how the death of her own mother, and the tremendous strength and influence of Fran's, sowed the seeds of their disparate lives.

This is also the story of Banner's own spiritual journey. In the course of reconnecting with Fran, she goes to Lama and explores alternatives to the Protestantism of her own childhood. She undergoes a conversion of sorts and joins the Sufi Order in the West, a spiritual group in Los Angeles.

Exploring the intersections of biography and autobiography, East and West, faith and reason, "Finding Fran" is a unique portrait of two women's lives that accounts for the tremendous differences between people, even as it reveals the enduring ties of friendship.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published December 15, 1998

About the author

A founder of the field of women's history in the 1970s, Lois Banner is Professor of History Emerita at the University of Southern California. Banner graduated from UCLA, with a Master's Degree in European History and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in American history. Along with Mary Hartman, she founded the Berkshire Conference in Women's History, the biennial conference that has been held ever since and that is considered the major event in the field. She was the first woman president of the American Studies Association, and in 2006 she won the Bode-Pearson prize of the American Studies Association for Lifetime Achievement in the field. Professor Banner is also a past president of the Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association, and of the Coordinating Committee in Women's History of the American Historical Association. She has also been a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, of the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard College, and of the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating story of 2 women who were friends in high school in the 50s, and the differing paths their lives took. One is a professor of women's studies at USC, and the other converted to Islam and lives in Alexandria.