The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s

by Maggie Doherty

An important debut work of narrative nonfiction: the timely, never-before-told story of five brilliant, passionate women who, in the early 1960s, converged at the newly founded Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study, stepping outside the domestic sphere and shaping the course of feminism in ways that still resonate today.

In 1960, at the height of an era that expected women to focus solely on raising families, Radcliffe College announced the founding of an Institute for Independent Study, offering fellowships to women with a PhD or "the equivalent" in artistic success. Acclaimed writer and Harvard lecturer Maggie Doherty introduces us to five brilliant friends--poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin, painter Barbara Swan, sculptor Mariana Pineda, and writer Tillie Olsen--who came together at the Institute and would go on to make history. Drawing from their notebooks, letters, lecture recordings, journals, and finished works, Doherty weaves from these women's own voices a moving narrative of friendship, ambition, activism, and art. Beautifully written and urgently told, The Equivalents shows us where we've been--and inspires us to go forward.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Feminism, Biography, Art, Womens, Biography Memoir

359 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 19, 2020

Reviews

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1960, Radcliffe College launched a pioneer program , the Institute of Independent studies. It's goal was to foster the talent of those women who were stuck at home, raising children, without a space to call their own. It offered these women a stipend for childcare or household help, a office of their own at the institution and free access to the library. These five women, Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin, posts, Barbara Swan a painter, a sculptor, Mariana Pineda and Tillie Olsen, a writer. Although it was stated that this program was for women with degrees, it was also stated that the equivalency in work or talent could also apply. These five women were without official college credentials and hence were known as the Equivalents.

I loved this book, a cultural biography of the times but also an in-depth look at these women and their lives, prior to the program and after. It focuses quite often on the complicated friendship between Anne Sexton, Kumin and Olsen. There are many different women mentioned in this book, Virginia Woolf of course and her Room of my Own, Sylvia Plath, whose talent was astonishing but not enough to overcome life's obstacles. The groundbreaking Feminine Mystique, trailblazers all, some successful, some not. It is a wonderful look at women who transcended their expected roles and wanted more. Not all would find it, but many did.

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Equivalents was a fascinating and extensively researched debut non-fiction work by author Maggie Doherty. The book primarily focused on the groundbreaking program developed by Radcliffe in 1961 offering a small selected group of gifted women artists the opportunity to avail themselves of the resources they needed to succeed, namely, fellowship money, office space and access to a professional and creative female community for two years. It was limited to twenty-four women. However, Doherty primarily focused on the relationship and work of poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin as well as writer Tillie Olsen. She also explored the creative process inherent in the sculptures of Marianna Pineda and the art work and portraits by Barbara Swan. As these women came together in collaboration and support of one another the institute for most was nothing short of life-changing. This was very a well written and compelling work that not only explores the history of that time but all that still needs to be done.

"This book is about a small group of women writers and artists who operated as a hinge between the 1950s and 1960s, between a decade of women's confinement and a decade of women's liberation. It tells the story of their careers, their friendships, and their art as a way of describing how and why the feminist movement reemerged in 1960s America. But the book is also about their particularities, their inner lives, their conflicts. It attends to the rich, idiosyncratic, loving, competitive relationships that form between women--the kinds of relationships that so often go unexamined and unrecognized."

----- Maggie Doherty, Introduction to The Equivalents

[Tammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve been mired in thrillers for so long I had forgotten how much I enjoy well written and well researched biographies about the artistic with literary biographies being among my favorites. This group biography of Anne Sexton, Tillie Olsen, Maxine Kumin, Barbara Swan, and Mariana Pineda checked all of the boxes. Rather than an in-depth biography of each woman, THE EQUIVALENTS mainly focuses on their friendships which developed as fellowship recipients of an inaugural program at Radcliffe College intended to provide a room of one’s own, financial independence, and artistic support to further their scholarly and artistic work during the 60’s when women were expected to be the angels in the home. The candidates were required to possess the equivalent of a PhD. This nonfiction account of brilliant women pursuing their art is fascinating and satisfying. We’ve come a long way baby but there is so much farther to go.

[Valerie Campbell Ackroyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

I truly enjoyed listening to and reading this book. I sometimes kept walking longer in the morning just so I could finish the chapter.

I am just slightly younger than the generation of women the book is about; I came of age a decade later, in the 1970s, so I remember a lot about the women's movement but I was more in that "tweeny" kind of generation. Still told by my Edwardian-era parents that college was a waste for women but encouraged by my 10-year-older sister to go to college anyway. I only knew of two of the women profiled in the book--Sexton and Plath--as I am not a great reader of poetry and am not that familiar with American women painters and sculptors. I know them now that and will be reading more.

As a writer manqué, I envied the opportunities these creative women--Sexton, Kumin, Swan, Olsen, Pineda--had to be able to work, study, have their writings published and supported. I gobbled up the descriptions of their writings, the examples of their poetry, their "artistic" lives and I actually bought the book (I started this on Audible) so I could see the photos of the women and of Pineda's sculptures and Swan's drawings/paintings. In the end I couldn't find a photo of Pineda's sculptures so looked them up on Google; wonderful. Doherty of course covers the dark side of creativity--Sexton's and Plath's suicides, Olsen's and Kumin's self doubt--and tries to explain as much as possible what might have caused it and how it affected each one's work. One of the ongoing themes throughout the book--Sexton's mental illness--was especially poignant as it was so much more than depression.

As a reader, I appreciated Doherty's meticulous research and reflective writing. It seemed whenever I had a question as I read--these women were so "privileged", could I relate to them today? She answered by acknowledging the privilege but then going deep to explore it. She covers the black women's movement with sensitivity, acknowledging it isn't "her" experience to write, explaining historically and logistically the problems that black woman have had with the women's movement, profiling Alice Walker in her time at the Radcliffe Institute, and does it with original sources, letters by or to the people themselves. Articles they wrote, poetry and stories they wrote. I especially liked the quote that Doherty uses from Tillie Olsen--"There's nothing wrong with privilege except that not everybody has it."

I think that is really what this book is about. There is nothing wrong with women (or men for that matter) having wonderful experiences, contracts, grants, prizes, awarded to them. The problem is that it isn't an even field because so many people, because of work, family, education, remain hidden even though they are just as talented as the artists portrayed in this book. Truly, Virginia Woolf's comments about women needing money, education, time and a "room of one's one" are just as true today. I am glad that Doherty brings that out in this book. Her writing, although well researched academically, is approachable. No acadspeak: sociological or historical jargon. I think she really did cover the flavor of women's "place" in society in the 1950s and 1960s very well and anyone of my generation (born in the 1950s) would enjoy reading it for that alone. If you wonder about the artist's life and how a modern artist is inspired by/hampered by her environment, this is a great book. I also think it is an important book for younger women (and men) to read so that they can think about their own places--those they inherited and those they want to fight for.

A great book.

[Ada · Rating 4 out of 5]

M'ha agradat. L'escenari: Boston, Cambridge i els seus suburbis. L'època: Inicis dels anys 60.

Parla de les vides d'Anne Sexton, Maxine Kumin, Barbara Swann, Marianna Pineda i Tillie Olsen, i de la relació personal i artística que van crear entre elles quan van ser acceptades al Institute of Independent Study's the Radcliffe (universitat germana de Harvard), un programa fet per donar espai, diners i oportunitats a dones amb un potencial artístic i intel·lectual que havien hagut de deixar enrere per formar una família.

Tot i que se centra en elles cinc, i sobretot en l'amistat entre Sexton i Kumin, el llibre retrata molt bé aquella època tan a nivell social com polític, i entra molt també en la problemàtica d'un institut que, tot i donar beques a dones, seguia sent elitista i very white.

És molt interessant veure com aquestes dones, abans de que el moviment feminista agafés més força a finals dels 60 i 70, ja escrivien, pintaven, reflexionaven sobre moltes de les qüestions que després entrarien a primer pla. I també és interessant veure com cada una navegava aquesta situació política i personal.

[S · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is largely an interesting and well-written group biography of five women who were awarded paid fellowships by Radcliffe in 1960. The Institute for Independent Study was revolutionary, though no one involved thought of it that way; it was one of the first efforts to try and combat women's underrepresentation in higher learning and post-graduate careers.

The book focuses on the five women who were admitted with no PhD, but the "equivalent" of one in the form of a portfolio of artistic achievement: Anne Sexton, Maxine Kumin, Tillie Olsen, Barbara Swan, and Maria Pineda. There is an odd mismatch here between the jacket description and the actual book, since Pineda and Swan get very little focus; the real heart of the book is Sexton, Kumin, and their friendship, with a healthy subplot about Olsen, and it's not really clear why the book wasn't sold on that basis. And the descriptions of some of the Institute members backgrounded here are so interesting that I wished the book had a more general focus. When introducing educational psychologist Alma Wittlin, the only single woman in the group, Doherty notes that in 1960, only eight percent of American women over twenty-five had never been married. What! More about Wittlin, please. Unfortunately there's only one further mention of her in the book, a brief one.

Doherty is, mostly, a thoughtful writer: she's writing a book about the constraints felt by white, middle-class women the 1950s and 1960s, and she does so without either ignoring their privilege or by understating the misogyny that they faced. That's very unusual, and it impressed me. The book increasingly shifts, as it goes on, to the struggles of working class and black women in the academy. (Alice Walker was a later Institute resident; one of the later chapters in the book, "Springs of Creativity", details the efforts that she and other black women made to publish and rediscover black women writers, and to include their work as part of the commonly studied literary canon).

One of the reasons I wanted to read this book was to see how the author dealt with Anne Sexton's sexual abuse of her daughter. The book is largely centered around Sexton and her experiences; her picture is the one on the cover. It's a challenging subject, and the answer is that Doherty doesn't deal with it at all. It goes completely unmentioned, even in the footnotes. Doherty cites Linda Gray Sexton numerous times, so she clearly considers her a reliable source. Just not in this instance.

This isn't a surprising omission, not really; if you want to write about Sexton as an important feminist writer, completely eliding the issue makes your life a whole lot easier. A big part of the book is Sexton's struggles with the roles of wife and mother, and the poetry (including poems about her relationship with Gray Sexton) that resulted. Domestic life takes up a huge part of the book. But Doherty carefully doesn't mention the part that would probably have destroyed a good chunk of the audience's ability to emphasize with Sexton's struggles. I started to feel increasingly crazy as the book went on, and then while reading reviews for the book — which were critical of the book's tilted focus, but never mentioned the part I took issue with. I was questioning my own memory before I looked at Sexton's Wikipedia page, where the allegations are mentioned in the introductory paragraph. It's not exactly hidden.

From the epilogue: I began writing it in the late fall of the same year [2016], following the election of Donald Trump — a man who has been accused multiple times of sexual assault. I mean, fuck Trump. But what a disturbing sentence in context. I'm not sure if the difference is that one person being sexually assaulted is fine and not really worth mentioning, or if it's just that Doherty likes Sexton and dislikes Trump, and so evaluates the importance of the accusations differently.

How should a book about a feminist icon, which largely believes in that woman's importance as a writer and a pioneer in her field, handle accusations of the same woman sexually abusing a child? With great difficulty, I guess. I certainly don't envy any of Sexton's biographers the task. But the effort would have made for a better, more difficult book, or at least one that isn't centered around a gaping moral absence.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is wonderful: elegantly-written, humane and urgent. For anyone in quarantine, it's a reminder of the joys and struggles of a prior generation of remarkable women.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

For thirty-nine years, from 1960 to 1999, female community thrived at the [Radcliffe] Institute. The complete merger of Harvard and Radcliffe in 1999 created one major change over the 1970s partial merger: out of the ashes of The Radcliffe Institute was borne the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study open to all genders. In a moment this rich community supportive of mature women and their creativity and scholarship was gone.

In 1960, Polly Bunting, the new president of Radcliffe College, founded The Radcliffe Institute on an idea: when provided with institutional support and intellectual community, [women] artists, writers, and scholars will produce better work than they would on their own. This was not an undergraduate program, but one designed for women who had at least a college degree, maybe even advanced degrees and some creative success, but due to the Cold War emphasis on women being wives and mothers to the exclusion of all else, their creativity was stifled, even abandonned. Doherty here gives us not only a history of the Institute itself, but the truth of that idea through the bios of 5 of its first fellows known as 'The Equivalents'. There were of course flaws to the program generally reflecting both the prejudices and expectations of the times and those in charge -- it was initially expected only mature married white privileged women in the Boston area would be considered -- but it evolved as seen by many who soon passed through the program such as Alice Walker. The institute fellows received financial support in the form of grants, a private office, access to libraries and classrooms of Harvard and Radcliffe over a 2 year period.

The Equivalents were poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin, writer Tillie Olsen, sculptress Marina Pineda, and artist Barbara Fink. They were friends and collaborators. Sexton and Kumin edited each others work, Fink provided cover art and illustrations for certain volumes of poetry, a Pineda Oracle statue sits still in the Radcliffe Yard at Harvard. All went on to great fame and success, awards and even Pulitzers, their 2 year fellowships at the Institute providing necessary dedicated time to pursue their art and studies. There stories are compelling.

Doherty thankfully provides us with in depth bios of each of these women, though Sexton, Kumin and Olsen dominate. Many others pass through who are not part of the institute but provided important roles: Sylvia Plath, Betty Friedan, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick and Alice Walker to name but a few. It is through all these stories and the historical events in the background of these women's lives and the Institute that we see the genesis and evolution of the women's movement, beautifully rendered here, including the various divisions that rapidly occurred primarily based in class and race as well as privilege and what exactly feminism and liberation required for each group.

I was thoroughly engaged in reading this the entire time, readily picking it back up to read another chapter or two. It was also nostalgic to a degree. I was a child in the 60s but when I entered Barnard College as a freshman in fall 1973, I very much was one of the first generation of women who followed and benefited from the path forged by all these women, allowing me to take classes in 'women's studies', write a thesis on the political writings of a French female author, even pursue a profession on my terms that earlier only a tiny number of women entered, and even fewer with agrarian backgrounds.

It's good that I ended up reading this at this particular time when it feels as if so many advances fought for are being stripped away because it has made me remember that we still have come a long way and hold on to much. We just can't ease up and stop pushing, demanding, and fighting for a second.

This book was written during the Trump presidency and published in spring 2020. It's been under the radar, likely due to pandemic, though also probably because no one has heard of The Radcliffe Institute. I certainly did not know about it or the impact it had. If you are interested in writing, poetry, feminism, women's history, education and educational history, any of these women, the intellectual world of Boston and its suburbs in the 60s and 70s, and even mental illness and suicide among writers and poets, you must read this.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5, rounded up. Really interesting, but for people interested in Barbara Swan or Marianna Peneda, this book will fall a bit short. I was in it to learn about the authors and poets, and they make up the bulk of the book.

[Phoebe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring as all hell. I bought this book junior year of high school because I thought it was going to be gay and thus felt obliged to finish it but it turned out to be the stupidest most annoying account of a bunch of irrelevant pretentious radcliffers in the 50s. Written by an author obsessed with the “literary elite,” “high art,” second-wave feminism, and how many little facts she researched. I love 20th century history but this was not for me. Could have been good if rewritten into a historically-inspired fiction narrative but was actually just annoying and slightly sickening.

[spoko · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book, especially if you're particularly interested in one or more of the women in the group (personally, I picked it up due to an interest in Tillie Olsen). But it does go on some pretty lengthy asides and overly long descriptions, which don't add much to the whole. Should have been a fair bit shorter.

[Komal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary and scintillating in all its wisdom, warmth, and tenderness. That chapter on Kumin and Sexton's friendship was my favourite part of this book

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very good, and goes beyond a simple story of the writers at the Bunting Institute. What she does really well in this book is to use the women artists & writers as exemplars of this time and to contextualize them within what was happening with women at the time.
I think she's a good writer and she did so much research, and it shows.
She does a good job of expanding beyond the upper class, educated world of some of these women to talk about who was excluded and the elusiveness of creativity for those who have to work full-time, especially at blue collar jobs.
She did a good job of outlining the birth of women's studies programs and how Tillie Olsen and Alice Walker and others contributed to that field.
I feel like this is a really important piece of history, not just about these few women, The Equivalents of the title, but for creative women and working women.
In the end, I do think it is a tragedy that the Bunting Institute is no longer dedicated to helping women, because I don't think it's all that much easier to be a working woman/mother, whether you are a writer, artist, scientist, or whatever. I still think working mothers face a lot of difficulty in maintaining a creative or critical practice and that as a society we still have pretty far to go in supporting that work.
Highly recommend this book!

[Ana]

Kumin and Sexton were the focus, which weakens a bit the argument, but still a good read.

[Elizabeth Fleury · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author Doherty writes, “I knew that the women who had gone before me…had fought hard, and under difficult conditions, to change their lives and the lives of the women they knew and loved.”
I want to give a big hug of gratitude to all these women who dedicated themselves to the feminist cause and refused to give up. We must continue to do the same and never be complacent. I deeply appreciate the perspective, context and Doherty’s thorough research process. While I am profoundly sad that I didn’t have this encompassing view and understanding of how much I benefited from the women’s movement, I am thankful to now have this depth of knowledge to continue the fight and share the story with all our daughters. 💕

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw this book on display at my library for women’s history month and grabbed it without thinking; I’ve not been drawn to non-fiction in a long time.

Maggie Doherty is an excellent writer both technically and narratively (as one might expect from a teacher of and PhD in writing at Harvard). She writes so well that I repeatedly marvel at her clarity and organization while simultaneously experiencing her words as an invisible gateway in service to the story. It’s an interesting juxtaposition of extreme talent and humility that I find quite satiating.

The stories she presents are timely; they are critical to the understanding of creativity, art, literature, motherhood, womanhood, and intellectual pursuit. They also take a close look at sociopolitical questions around gender, class, and race. While the facts and history were mostly new to me, I couldn’t shake a distinct experience of deja vu throughout.

Perhaps the most vital offering of this work, beyond its invitation to continue to use one’s brain as an adult woman, is the unabashed complexity of the women represented. Doherty explores the fullness of each woman from a place of clear seeing. There is no +1 -1 math around strengths and flaws. Just an honest appraisal of fully human adult women with brains and hearts and differing gifts and opinions.

Loved it!

[Mary Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin's Rollicking Poetical Adventure, featuring some other more-or-less related people

I joke but really, this book was overwhelmed by Sexton and Kumin, and everything else felt like an afterthought. I take particular umbrage with the clumsy handling of the lives of the two artists in this book, Barbara Swan and Mariana Pineda. While Doherty can discuss their private lives at length, she has no grasp of how to place their work within an art historical or art world context, and they end up even more steamrolled by Sexton and Kumin.

Doherty is also incredibly self-conscious about her decision to write about the very white environment of the Radcliffe Institute, and while she handles it well at first (discussing the philosophy behind the admission process of the Institute and the racial labor relations that resulted from the distribution of the Institute's stipends) she does fumble it with an incredibly out-of-place chapter about Alice Walker, who wasn't connected to the Equivalents of the title. In any other circumstance, this likely would have been just a blip on my radar, but it adds disproportionate stress to the already clumsy structure of the rest of the book.

I was disappointed, but perhaps someone with more interest in literary history would have enjoyed this more than I did.

[Bahar Rahsepar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absolute must-read for everyone, offering a poignant and eye-opening journey through the complexities of womanhood, camaraderie, and the enduring fight for equality. At its heart, this book captures the essence of collective resilience, chronicling the triumphs and trials of female friendships as they intersect with systemic challenges, social constructs, and personal ambition.

What makes this book truly remarkable is its call to action. It doesn’t just recount history or reflect on the status quo; it challenges readers to evaluate how far we’ve come and how far we still need to go. It urges us to continue the fight—to dismantle patriarchal systems, to nurture spaces where women thrive, and to envision a society that celebrates the feminine as a foundational pillar of progress.

[Isla McKetta · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really stretched my thinking about how far we've come (and how far we haven't) with feminism and left me longing for a tighter creative community of my own. If anyone has a couple of mil to found something like this, lemme know and I would be happy to help you organize it :) It was accidental that I read this book after Lessons in Chemistry, but important as The Equivalents gave specific context that deepened my reading of the other and led to me reading Cora's Kitchen, a book that showed how one woman reaches into her core to make a life that matters.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This well-written book describes an "experiment" that Radcliffe did in 1960 to provide time and space for educated women to use their skills rather than waste them being housewives. The experiment included those women who had life experience that were the "equivalent" of college degrees--and so the title. It is at once a look at the friendships of these women (particularly Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin), but also a look at the women's movement as it developed. This book is essential for anyone interested in the movement and also a joy a read.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of 5 Radcliffe women I’m the 50s, 60s, who had a hand in shaping current feminist perspectives.

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had no idea this program existed. At Radcliffe, in the early sixties, a program was started to help women, mostly those who already had advanced degrees and who had started on a career in writing, the arts, or sciences, continue their scholarship for a period of about two years. They got "rooms of their own"--offices and studios and places to work--and they got stipends they could use to offset living expenses or hire child care; they got access to the resources of Harvard and Radcliffe; and they got a community. Anne Sexton, Maxine Kumin, Tille Olsen, and two artists I was unfamiliar with, Barbara Swan and Marianne Pineda, are the women whose stories comprise the the main portion of the book, though Sylvia Plath and some others make appearances later on. Fascinating, informative, absorbing book about how women in general, and these women in particular, could, with enough support, see their work and creative energies come to impressive fruition.

[Lisa Francesca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent example of group biography, great stories of gifted and determined women.

[Sharon Bright · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

[Keenan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plenty of important and interesting social experiments were done in the 50s and the 60s: names like Timothy Leary and B.F.Skinner and Phillip Zimbardo come to mind, helping to cement these two decades as ones of radical change and social upheaval. Lesser known perhaps in this history is the Radcliffe Fellowship experiment, designed by one Laura Bunting to realize the potential of well-educated women (or those of equivalent talent), largely mothers, towards great creative and scientific endeavours by providing them with the necessary resources (stipend, office, the Harvard library). The author of this non-fiction work largely focusses on five women, two poets (Anne Sexton and Maxime Kumin), an author (Tillie Olsen), a painter (Barbara Swan), and a sculptor (Marianna Pineda), delving into their lives with a particular focus on their time spent with the Institute, giving seminars and forging friendships. Lives of other fellows, people connected to the experiment, and other figures in 60s poetry and feminism also come and go in this book.

Leaving aside the extremely problematic fact that the rosy picture painted of Sexton, the most prominent fellow in this text, leaves out important allegations of abuse from her children, this book in many ways leaves much to be desired. First, there's a lot of extraneous stuff that could have easily been cut out: for example, there's a five page build-up to one of Olsen's speeches to her fellows despite the fact that it received a lukewarm reception and generally wasn't very clear. Second, it becomes clear that there's only so many hundreds of pages that can be written about an academic fellowship, and the author takes every opportunity available to go off on tangents about Sylvia Plath or Betty Friedan, giving me the impression that this whole work would have been better off as two or three essays.

I wouldn't recommend reading this as I think there are much better accounts of the progression of feminism and gender equality in the US in this time period, and while the women in this book unquestionably led interesting lives (especially compared to the average white middle-class American housewife at the time), the finer details of their relationships and worries and friendships is not suited for a general audience.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

They were "The Equivalents" not because they were equal to men, but because to earn a Radcliffe quasi "genius grant" in the 1960s, women had to have "the equivalent" of a PhD. The book focuses on five women, including familiar poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin. But you also get to meet painter Barbara Swan, sculptor Mariana Pineda, perhaps, like me, for the first time. Pineda, especially, seems a model of how doing your own thing can make you very content. But it is the writer Tillie Olsen, whose short story "Tell Me A Riddle" still haunts me 30 years after reading it, is the real challenge. Olsen had to work for a living most of her life, and this inability to focus on her writing frustrated her academic peers. A good portion of the book is taken up with description of how Olsen procrastinated and doubted herself, which I can read very similar descriptions of in my own diaries. While it is helpful to see this close up, a little more narrative shaping of Olsen's struggles would have made the story more fluid.

[Karah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an engrossing and impactful book. I connected to every woman whether through her shortcomings or successes. Maggie Doherty has a written a modern classic. I hope laymen and academics embrace this book. I loved every page and it illuminated me to spaces where I need growth.
Doherty wrote truthfully of each woman yet I empathized with them. An outstanding writer. I would recommend to anyone who knows they need growth. Better than any self-help!!!

I am thankful I bought this book.

Cheers, Maggie Doherty!!!

[Kristin Boldon · Rating 5 out of 5]

History that reads like the best fiction, of female friendship, art, and aging. I loved learning more about these artists, and how the Radcliffe Institute helped them, and then they went on to help each other and others! Having read and enjoyed Tillie Olsen's Silences, I loved getting the context for how it was created.

[Marilyn Boyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Equivalents is a story that did need to be told, as Radcliffe's experiment was part of a burgeoning era to deal with the inequality of gender in America's post-war life. As I knew much about Anne Sexton already, I anticipated an exploration into the lives of the other grant recipients. Marianna Pineda, in particular, was a fascinating sculptor who receives little recognition today. Unfortunately, there was not a great deal of scholarly information on the other participants, and I was unhappy with the extreme focus on Sexton, including repetition of her thoughts and behaviour. As Doherty had researched both Swan's and Pineda's archive in the Smithsonian, I was amazed by the lack of material presented. There was also a lack of disclosure about the bias of Radcliffe's awarding of the grants, as Doherty did not address its white privileged choices until later, and then only lightly. Only when Alice Walker joined the ranks of these women, did she discuss this issue briefly. Doherty made a great deal about the applications of the chosen women, but it seems highly unlikely that Radcliffe did not know that their lives intersected previously, even if only through letters. What about the other applicants? Doherty's thesis is narrow, supposedly (she puts in a great deal about Betty Friedan and Sylvia Plath as well, who were not part of the experiment) focusing on the five women; a better book on the experiment might have been to include the other 30 odd women involved.

I understand Doherty's fascination with Sexton, as she ascended to greater celebrity than the others, however part of the study of that celebrity should have looked at the larger cultural phenomenon of the time. In the mid-sixties, there were several actresses, singers, and socialites who had a similar look - Anouk Aimee and Anne Bancroft come to mind - who have similar characteristics, sleek dark hair, an elegant stature, wide facial features, etc. It was a "look" that dominated the era. Having seen Sexton at a reading in early 1970s (and also emulating her as a writer), I was starstruck myself by her confidence. But Doherty's writing falls flat when trying to capture that feeling: "Sexton always dressed carefully, applying the right lipstick and picking out the perfect jewelry." "Right", "perfect"?
Generalities like this, do not describe.

Doherty redeems herself for me a bit, as she moves into the women's liberation movement in the later chapters, but the book is surprisingly unfocused in the early sections, when discussing Friedan and Plath. Since I am interested in all these women and topics, I gave the book four stars, but it seems pretty rough to me.

[Lisa-Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1960, Radcliffe conducted an intriguing experiment when it invited “intellectually displaced women” to join a special scholar’s program for one year where they could theoretically pursue their art. Talented women who would later become famous – Anne Sexton, Tillie Olsen, Barbara Swan, Marianne Pineda, Maxine Kumin – were drawn there and this book documents their experience. I struggled mightily with the premises of the experiment, which targeted privileged white women with children who presumably needed help with work space, money and “being taken seriously.” Hmmm. Much ado was made about the drain of child-rearing and housework on the artist’s life. I wanted women to have these opportunities, of course, but was stopped in my tracks by the pervasive paternalism and apologetic tone of the experiment. I tried hard to appreciate the times they lived in. Consider these phrases: “Radcliffe Launching Plan to Get Brainy Women out of the Kitchen,” “Studying, in appropriate doses, mixes wonderfully well with homemaking,” “Every one of these neat little brick houses has at least one woman who doesn’t seem to have enough to do.”

Okay, enough of my soapbox. The best parts of the book were the stories of the individual women and their friendships. I loved learning more about Tillie Olsen, who crafted a writing career from fits and starts while raising four children and a grandchild. She was already middle-aged when she came to the Institute and she boldly embraced her family life as part of her gift as a writer. Anne Sexton was a troubled and mercurial poet on the verge of publishing in the big time when she arrived at Radcliffe in the last years of her too-short life. The women became genuine friends and mentors for each other. After the initial class there were black artists admitted such as Alice Walker, Alice Childress, and Florence Ladd. The stories of the women’s friendships, especially their correspondence, was riveting and illuminating. I finished the book thinking anew about the myriad ways that women push through the complexities of their lives – lives they choose and lives that are thrust upon them – to express their gifts.