My Brilliant Friends: Our Lives in Feminism

My Brilliant Friends is an innovative group biography of three friendships forged in second-wave feminism. Poignant and politically charged, the book is a captivating personal account of the complexities of women's bonds.

Nancy K. Miller describes her friendships with three well-known scholars and literary critics: Carolyn Heilbrun, Diane Middlebrook, and Naomi Schor. Their relationships were simultaneously intimate and professional, emotional and intellectual, animated by the political ferment of the women's movement. Friendships like these sustained the generation of women whose entrance into male-dominated professions is still reshaping American society. The stories of their intertwined lives and books reveal how feminism illuminated the political importance of personal experience. Reflecting on aging and loss, ambition and rivalry, competition and collaboration, the three narratives combine to show us why and how friendship matters in the worlds of both work and love. Inspired in part by the portraits of two women's passionately enmeshed lives in Elena Ferrante's acclaimed Neapolitan novels, My Brilliant Friends presents a revisionary perspective on the history and future of friendships between women.