Robin Morgan

For the British newspaper editor, see Robin Morgan (journalist).
Robin Morgan
Born (1941-01-29) January 29, 1941
Lake Worth, Florida, United States
Residence Manhattan, New York City, United States
Nationality United States
Occupation Poet, author, political theorist and activist, journalist, lecturer, editor
Years active 1940s–present
Known for Books and journalism
Political activism
Sisterhood anthologies
Home town Mount Vernon, New York
Spouse(s) Kenneth Pitchford (divorced)
Children Blake Morgan
Website RobinMorgan.us

Robin Morgan (born January 29, 1941) is an American poet, author, political theorist and activist, journalist, lecturer, and former child actor. Since the early 1960s she has been a key radical feminist member of the American Women's Movement, and a leader in the international feminist movement. Her 1970 anthology Sisterhood is Powerful has been widely credited with helping to start the contemporary feminist movement in the US, and was cited by the New York Public Library as "One of the 100 Most Influential Books of the 20th Century"[1] She has written more than 20 books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and is also known as the editor of Ms. Magazine.[2]

During the 1960s, she participated in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements; in the late 1960s she was a founding member of radical feminist organizations such as New York Radical Women and W.I.T.C.H. She founded or co-founded the Feminist Women's Health Network, the National Battered Women's Refuge Network, Media Women, the National Network of Rape Crisis Centers, the Feminist Writers' Guild, the Women's Foreign Policy Council, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, GlobalSister.org, and Greenstone Women's Radio Network. She also co-founded the Women's Media Center with activist Gloria Steinem and actor/activist Jane Fonda.

Early life and career

Morgan in studio at The Robin Morgan Show in 1946

Robin Morgan was born on January 29, 1941 in Lake Worth, Florida, although her birthdate was reported inaccurately throughout her career as a child actor. Her mother, Faith Berkeley Morgan, traveled from her New York residence to Florida to give birth, in order to avoid public scrutiny for her unmarried status.[3] Robin's father, a medical doctor named Mates Morgenstern, did not accompany pregnant Faith on her trip.

Robin Morgan grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, and later, on Sutton Place in Manhattan. Her mother and her maternal aunt Sally started her as a child model when she was a toddler. At what she herself and others thought was the age of four (she was actually five years old),[3] she had her own radio program on New York station WOR titled Little Robin Morgan. She was also a regular on the original network radio version of Juvenile Jury, playing herself. She started in the role of Dagmar Hansen, the younger sister in the TV series Mama, starring Peggy Wood, at age seven. The show premiered on CBS in 1949.

Morgan, bottom far right, playing the youngest child Dagmar in Mama

Morgan guest starred during the Golden Age of Television on such live dramas as Omnibus, Suspense, Danger, Hallmark Hall of Fame, Robert Montgomery Presents, Tales of Tomorrow, and Kraft Theatre, and starred in such "spectaculars" as Kiss and Tell and Alice in Wonderland. She worked with directors such as Sidney Lumet, John Frankenheimer, Ralph Nelson; writers such as Paddy Chayefsky and Rod Serling; and performed with actors such as Boris Karloff, Rosalind Russell, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and Cliff Robertson.[3]

She left the cast of Mama at age 14, having wanted since age four to write rather than to act. Morgan fought her mother's efforts to keep her in show business.[4] She graduated from The Wetter School in Mount Vernon, New York, in 1956, then was privately tutored from 1956 to 1959.[5] She published her first serious poetry in literary magazines at age 17.[3]

Parents

Until Robin Morgan was 13 years old, her mother Faith had claimed that Robin's father had been killed in World War II.[3] When Robin revealed that she had overheard conversations between her mother and aunt that contradicted such a claim, Faith changed her story.[3] She then asserted that Robin's father had escaped from one Nazi concentration camp after another, and that she had saved his life by sponsoring his immigration to the United States where he had no family. In 1961 Robin learned that this was not a true story.[3]

As a young woman, no longer working in show business, Robin Morgan learned the surprising truth––not only about her father, who was still alive––but also about how old she really was.[3] She learned that her mother had asked her Florida obstetrician to sign an affidavit stating that the baby had been born on January 29, 1942.[3] In fact, the birth had taken place exactly a year earlier. Faith Morgan and her obstetrician did this to conceal an out-of-wedlock birth that had been ignored by the biological father, Morganstern, who was himself an obstetrician.[3]

Dr. Morgenstern visited the infant Robin once and chose not to see her again.[3] He stored a copy of her original birth certificate in his medical office in New Brunswick, New Jersey, but he never contacted Faith Morgan again.

Dr. Morgenstern became aware of Robin's fame as a child actor, but he remained firm in his decision to avoid contact with Faith Morgan. When Robin paid a surprise visit to his New Jersey office in January 1961, he gave her her birth certificate.[3] She had sought a meeting with him after discovering, without her mother's knowledge, a listing for the medical practice of Dr. Mates Morgenstern in the New Brunswick telephone directory. During a conversation in his office, Morgenstern told his daughter that his current wife was a woman he had known since their respective childhoods in Austria, and that World War II had separated them. He added that he had known Faith Morgan only briefly after his arrival in the United States. They first met there more than a year before the United States entered World War II, and she had had nothing to do with his immigration.[3] During the 1961 conversation, Dr. Morgenstern claimed that Faith had fantasized their relationship as more important than it was.[3] Shortly after his visit to Faith Morgan and their newborn baby, he abandoned them. Shortly thereafter, his Austrian girlfriend arrived in the United States and they resumed their relationship. They went on to have two sons.

In her autobiography Saturday's Child: A Memoir, Morgan describes the two encounters with her biological father that she had as a young adult against her mother's wishes. The first was in his medical office in January 1961 and the second was at his New Jersey home to which he invited her and her husband in February 1965.[3] Morgenstern did not want his sons to know that they had a half-sister.[3] During dinner at her father's home, she acceded to his request that they tell his two sons that she was "the daughter of an old friend."[3] Morgan refused to participate in such a charade again and therefore never visited his home again.[3] She never again met him or her two half-brothers.[3]

When Morgan's mother Faith entered her early 60s, she developed Parkinson's disease.[3] Morgan telephoned her biological father Dr. Mates Morgenstern to ask if he wanted to say goodbye to his former girlfriend Faith from decades earlier, and he declined.[3] During Faith's illness her life savings, which consisted of her daughter's earnings in radio and television––by then a six-figure sum that had accumulated in the bank––was stolen by her two elderly home-caregivers.[3] Morgan discovered this but ultimately chose not to press charges.

Adult career

As she entered adulthood, Robin Morgan continued her education as a non-matriculating student at Columbia University. She began working as a secretary at Curtis Brown Literary Agency, where she met and worked with such writers as poet W. H. Auden in the early 1960s. She had already begun publishing her own poetry (later collected in her first book of poems, Monster, published in 1972). Throughout the next decades, along with political activism, writing fiction and nonfiction prose, and lecturing at colleges and universities on women's rights, Morgan continued to write and publish poetry.[3]

Morgan being arrested at Grove Press, 1970

In 1962, Morgan married poet Kenneth Pitchford.[4] She gave birth to their son, Blake Morgan, in 1969. At that time, she was working as an editor at Grove Press and was involved in an attempt to unionize the publishing industry. When Grove summarily fired her and other union sympathizers, she led a seizure and occupation of their offices in the spring of 1970, protesting the union-busting, as well as the dishonest accounting of royalties to Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X's widow. Morgan and eight other women were arrested that day.[3]

In the mid-1970s Morgan became a Contributing Editor to Ms. Magazine, and continued her affiliation there as a part- or full-time editor in the following decades. She served as editor-in-chief of the magazine from 1989 to 1994, turning it into a highly successful, ad-free, bimonthly, international publication, which won awards for both writing and design, and received considerable acclaim among journalists.[5][6]

In 1979, when the Supersisters trading card set was produced and distributed, featuring famous women from politics, media and entertainment, culture, sports, and other areas of achievement, one of the cards featured Morgan's name and picture.[7] Today, the trading cards are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the University of Iowa library.[8]

In 2005, Morgan co-founded the non-profit progressive women's media organization, The Women’s Media Center, with friends actor/activist Jane Fonda, and activist Gloria Steinem. Seven years later, in 2012, she debuted a weekly radio show and podcast, Women’s Media Center Live With Robin Morgan. The broadcast is syndicated in the US and, as a podcast, is published online at the WMCLive website, and distributed on iTunes in 110 countries. It has been praised by The Huffington Post as "talk radio with a brain" and features commentary by Morgan about recent news, and interviews with activists, politicians, authors, actors and artists.[9]

In 2012, Morgan debuted a radio show and podcast, "Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan." The weekly hour was picked up by CBS Radio two weeks after its launch and is broadcast on CBS affiliate WJFK each Saturday. The program features commentary by Morgan about recent news, and interviews with activists, politicians, authors, actors and artists.

Activism

By 1962 Morgan had become active in the anti-war Left, and had also contributed articles and poetry to such Left-wing and counter-culture journals as Liberation Rat, Win, and The National Guardian.[3]

In the 1960s she became increasingly involved in social-justice movements, notably the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam war. In early 1967, she was active in the Youth International Party, (known in the media as the "Yippies") with Abbie Hoffman and Paul Krassner. However, tensions over sexism within the YIP (and the New Left in general) came to a head when Morgan grew more involved in Women's Liberation and contemporary feminism.[3]

In 1967, Morgan became a founding member of the short-lived New York Radical Women group. She was the key organizer of their September 1968 inaugural protest of the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City.[8] Morgan wrote the Miss America protest pamphlet No More Miss America!, and that same year formed W.I.T.C.H., a radical feminist group that used public street theater (called "hexes" or "zaps") to call attention to sexism. Morgan designed the universal symbol of the women’s movement––the female symbol, a circle with a cross beneath, centered with a raised fist. The Oxford English Dictionary also credits her with coining the term "herstory" in her 1970 anthology Sisterhood is Powerful.[10][11] Concerning the feminist organization W.I.T.C.H., Morgan wrote:

The fluidity and wit of the witches is evident in the ever-changing acronym: the basic, original title was Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell [...] and the latest heard at this writing is Women Inspired to Commit Herstory."[10]

With all the royalties from her anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful, Morgan founded the first feminist grant-giving foundation in the US: The Sisterhood Is Powerful Fund, which provided seed money to many early women's groups throughout the 1970s and 1980s. She made a decisive break from what she described as the "male Left"[12] when she led the women's takeover of the underground newspaper Rat in 1970,[13] and listed the reasons for her break in the first women's issue of the paper, in her essay titled "Goodbye to All That." The essay gained notoriety in the press for naming specific sexist men and institutions in the Left. Decades later, during the Democratic primaries for the 2008 presidential race, Morgan wrote a fiery sequel to her original essay, titled "Goodbye To All That #2", in defense of Hillary Rodham Clinton.[3] The article quickly went viral on the internet for lambasting sexist rhetoric directed towards Clinton by the media.[13]

Morgan has traveled extensively across the United States and around the world to bring attention to cross-cultural sexism. She has met with and interviewed female rebel—army fighters in the Philippines, Brazilian women activists in the slums/favelas of Rio, women organizers in the townships of South Africa, and underground feminists in Iran.[8] Twice––in 1986 and 1989 she spent months in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, West Bank, and Gaza, to report on the conditions of women. Morgan has also spoken at universities and institutions in countries across Europe, the Caribbean, and Central America, as well as in Australia, Brazil, China, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Nepal, New Zealand, Pacific Island nations, the Philippines, and South Africa.[5]

Over the years, Morgan has received numerous awards for her activism on women’s rights.[8] A sampling: The Feminist Majority Foundation named Robin Morgan "Woman of the Year" in 1990; she received the Warrior Woman Award for Promoting Racial Understanding from The Asian American Women's National Organization in 1992; in 2002 she received a Lifetime Achievement in Human Rights from Equality Now, and in 2003 The Feminist Press gave her a "Femmy" Award for her "service to literature."[5] She has also received the Humanist Heroine Award from The American Humanist Association in 2007.[14]

Limbaugh FCC incident

In March 2012 Morgan, along with her Women's Media Center co-founders Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem, wrote an open letter asking listeners to request that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigate the Rush Limbaugh–Sandra Fluke controversy,[15] where Limbaugh referred to Sandra Fluke as a "slut" and "prostitute" after she advocated for insurance coverage for contraception.[16] They asked that stations licensed for public airwaves carrying Limbaugh be held accountable for contravening public interest as a continual promoter of hate speech against various disempowered and minority groups.[17]

Sisterhood anthologies

Sisterhood is Global at Lincoln Center

In 1970, Morgan compiled, edited, and introduced the first anthology of feminist writings, Sisterhood Is Powerful. The compilation included now-classic feminist essays by such activists as Naomi Weisstein, Kate Millett, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Florynce Kennedy, Frances M. Beal, Joreen, Marge Piercy and Mary Daly, as well as historical documents including the N.O.W. Bill of Rights, excerpts from the SCUM Manifesto, the Redstockings Manifesto, historical documents from W.I.T.C.H., and a germinal statement from the Black Women’s Liberation Group of Mount Vernon.[18] It also included what Morgan coined "verbal karate": useful quotes and statistics about women.[19] In addition, it included what Morgan coined "verbal karate": useful quotes and statistics about women.[20] The anthology has been widely credited with helping to start the contemporary Women's Movement in the US, and was cited by the New York Public Library as "One of the 100 Most Influential Books of the 20th Century".[1] Morgan established the first American feminist grant-giving organization, The Sisterhood Is Powerful Fund, with the royalties from Sisterhood Is Powerful.[21] However the anthology was banned in Chile, China, and South Africa."[21]

Her follow-up volume in 1984, Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, compiled articles about women in over seventy countries. That same year she founded the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, notable for being the first international feminist think tank. Repeatedly refusing the post of president, she was elected secretary of the organization from 1989 to 1993, was VP from 1993 to 1997, and after serving on the advisory board, finally agreed to become president in 2004.[22] A third volume, Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium in 2003, was a collection of articles mostly by well-known feminists, both young and "vintage," in a retrospective on and future blueprint for the feminist movement.[8] It was compiled, edited, and with an introduction by Morgan, and Morgan wrote "To Vintage Feminists" and "To Younger Women", which were both included in the anthology as Personal Postscripts.[23]

Journalism

Morgan's articles, essays, reviews, interviews, political analyses, and investigative journalism have appeared widely in such publications as the Amazon Quarterly, The Atlantic, Broadsheet, Chrysalis, Essence, Equal Times, Everywoman, The Feminist Art Journal, The Guardian (US), The Guardian (UK), The Hudson Review, The Los Angeles Times, Ms., The New Republic, The New York Times, Off Our Backs, Pacific Ways, The Second Wave, Sojourner, The Village Voice, The Voice of Women, and various United Nations' periodicals, etc. Articles and essays have also appeared in reprint in international media, in English across the Commonwealth, and in translation in 13 languages in Europe, South America, the Middle East, and Asia.[24]

Morgan has served as a contributing editor to Ms. Magazine for many years, receiving the Front Page Award for Distinguished Journalism for her cover story titled "The First Feminist Exiles from the USSR" in 1981.[25] She also served as the magazine's editor-in-chief from 1989 to 1994, re-launching it as an ad-free, international bimonthly publication in 1991. This earned her a series of awards,[6][26] including the award for Editorial Excellence by Utne Reader in 1991, and the Exceptional Merit in Journalism Award by the National Women's Political Caucus.[5] Morgan resigned her post in 1994 to become Consulting Global Editor of the magazine, which she remains to this day.[27]

Morgan has written for online audiences and blogged frequently. Among her best known articles are "Letters from Ground Zero" (written and posted after the September 11 attacks in 2001—which went viral), "Goodbye To All That #2", "Women of the Arab Spring," "When Bad News is Good News: Notes of a Feminist News Junkie," "Manhood and Moral Waivers," and "Faith Healing: A Modest Proposal on Religious Fundamentalism." The last five and other examples of her online work are hosted in the archives of The Women's Media Center.[24]

Authorship

Robin Morgan has published 21 books, including works of poetry, fiction, and the now-classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful, Sisterhood Is Global, and Sisterhood Is Forever.[24] Well before she was known as a feminist leader, literary magazines published her as a serious poet.[28] According to a 1972 review of her first book of poems, Monster, in The Washington Post: "[These poems] establish Morgan as a poet of considerable means. There is a savage elegance, a richness of vocabulary, a thrust and steely polish..... A powerful, challenging book."[24] In 1979 Morgan received a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in poetry,[28] then held a writing residency at the arts colony Yaddo the following year.

Morgan’s poetry collections include A Hot January: Poems 1996–1999 (W. W. Norton, 1999), Depth Perception: New Poems and a Masque (Doubleday, 1994), Upstairs in the Garden: Poems Selected and New 1968–1988 (W. W. Norton, 1990), Death Benefits (Copper Canyon Press, 1981), Lady of the Beasts (Random House, 1976), and Monster (Random House, 1972). Of the book A Hot January, Alice Walker wrote: "Morgan proves that exquisite poetry can be the most surprising gift of grief. A volume as proud, fierce, vulnerable, and brave as the poet herself."[29] A review of Upstairs in the Garden, noted: "As a vindication and celebration of the female experience, these inventive poems successfully wed feminist rhetoric with vivid imagery and sensitivity to the music of language."[30] Two other books of poems, Lady of the Beasts and Depth Perception, earned reviews in Poetry Magazine with critic Jay Parini stating that "Robin Morgan will soon be regarded as one of our first-ranking poets."[31]

Morgan had published three books of fiction as of 2015. Her debut novel was the semi-autobiographical Dry Your Smile (published by Doubleday & Company,1987), followed by The Mer-Child: A Legend for Children and Other Adults (published by The Feminist Press at City University of New York,1991). Her most recent work of fiction was a historical novel titled The Burning Time (Melville House Books, 2006), set in the 14th century, based on court records of the first witchcraft trial in Ireland.[32] The Burning Time was placed on the Recommended Quality Fiction List of 2007 by the American Library Association,[33] in addition to being the 2006 Paperback Pick by Book Sense (The American Booksellers Association) [32]

Morgan has compiled, edited, and introduced several influential anthologies: Sisterhood Is Powerful: The Women’s Liberation Anthology (1970), Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women’s Movement Anthology (1984), and Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women’s Anthology for a New Millennium (2003). She has herself written non-fiction, including Going Too Far (1978), The Anatomy of Freedom (1984), The Demon Lover: On the Sexuality of Terrorism (1989), The Word of a Woman (1994), and Saturday’s Child: A Memoir (2001). One of the most widely translated of Morgan’s books and a best-seller, The Demon Lover is a commentary on the psychological and political roots of terrorism, and New York Times Book Review called it "Important...compelling....[Morgan] is intense and at times magnificent."[34] Her most recently published book of non-fiction is Fighting Words: A Tool Kit for Combating the Religious Right (2006).[35]

Organizations

The Sisterhood Is Global Institute

In 1984, Morgan, together with the late Simone de Beauvoir of France, and women from 80 other countries, founded The Sisterhood Is Global Institute (SIGI), an international non-profit NGO with consultative status to the United Nations, which has for three decades functioned as the world’s first feminist think-tank. The Institute has played a leading policy-formulation, strategic, and activist role in the evolution of the international Women’s Movement. SIGI has also developed a global communications network through which an umbrella of NGO interest, advice, contacts, and support is collectively mobilized to empower the global women’s movement.

Among its many activities, the Institute pioneered the first Urgent Acton Alerts regarding women’s rights; the first Global Campaign To Make Visible Women’s Unpaid Labor In National Accounts; and the first Women’s Rights Manuals For Muslim Societies (in 12 languages). Its most recent project is Donor Direct Action (donordirectaction.org), which links front-line women’s rights activists around the world to money, visibility, and popular support: minimum bureaucracy, maximum impact In 2005, Morgan co-founded the non-profit progressive organization, The Women’s Media Center with her friends actor/activist Jane Fonda, and activist Gloria Steinem. The focus of the organization is to make women powerful and visible in the media.

Women’s Media Center

In 2005, Morgan co-founded the non-profit progressive organization, The Women’s Media Center with her friends actor/activist Jane Fonda, and activist Gloria Steinem. The focus of the organization is to make women powerful and visible in the media.

Lectures and Professorships

An invited speaker at numerous universities in North America, Morgan has traveled—as organizer, speaker, journalist—across North America, Europe, and the Middle East to Australia, Brazil, the Caribbean, Central America, China, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Nepal, New Zealand, Pacific Island nations, the Philippines, and South Africa.[27] She has also been a Guest Professor or Scholar in Residence at a variety of academic institutions. She was Guest Chair for Feminist Studies at the New College of Florida in 1971; a visiting professor at The Center for Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture at Rutgers University in 1987; a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Residence for Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand in 1989; a Visiting Professor in residence at the University of Denver, Colorado in 1996; and Visiting Professor at the Center for Documentation on Women at University of Bologna, Italy, in 1996.[5] She was awarded an Honorary Degree as a Doctor of Humane Letters by the University of Connecticut at Storrs in 1992.[5] The Robin Morgan Papers, a collection that documents the personal, political, and professional aspects of Morgan's life, are archived at the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University.[5] They date from the 1940s to the present.

Controversial Stands

As a trailblazing radical feminist, Robin Morgan is no stranger to controversy; she has been arrested, and has received death threats from both the Right and the Left because of her activism.[36] According to a New Yorker Magazine article published in the aftermath of Morgan's essay Goodbye to All That (#2) going viral on the Internet, "At five feet tall Morgan is, not for the first time, the little woman who has started a big war."

In her original essay, Goodbye to All That (1970), Morgan bade adieu to "the dream that being in the leadership collective will get you anything but gonorrhea," referring to the "male Left." She also asserted that Charles Manson was "only the logical extreme of the normal American male’s fantasy."[37]

Two years later, her poem "Arraignment" (from Monster, 1972) stirred an international controversy over Ted Hughes’s influence on Sylvia Plath’s suicide—complete with lawsuits, the banning of the book, and the publication of underground, pirated feminist editions.[28]

As the leading organizer of the 1968 protest of the Miss America Pageant, "No More Miss America!", Morgan attacked the pageant’s "ludicrous 'beauty' standards and also accused the pageant of being racist, since at that time no African American woman had been a contestant. In addition––according to Morgan––in sending pageant winners to entertain troops in Vietnam, the women served as "death mascots" in an immoral war. Morgan asked, "Where else could one find such a perfect combination of American values -- racism, militarism, capitalism -- all packaged in one 'ideal' symbol, a woman."[38]

Morgan famously walked off "The Tonight Show" in 1969 when it screened vintage footage of her as a child actor while she was trying to speak seriously about the first national march against rape. Of the incident, she has been quoted as saying: "Imagine talking about such a subject and having it trivialized like that." [36] In 1974, with her phrase "Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice" (from her essay Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape), she became a central figure on one of the divisive issues in feminism, particularly among feminists in anglophone countries: pornography.

In 1973, Robin Morgan gave the keynote speech at the West Coast Lesbian Conference, in which she criticized Beth Elliott, a then pre-surgery male to female transgender singer who wanted to perform at the conference. At the end of her speech she called for a vote on ejecting Elliot, with over two-thirds voting to allow her to remain, however the minority threatened to disrupt the conference and Elliot chose to leave after her performance to avoid this. According to an article in The New Yorker in May 2014, that day began a dispute, still ongoing between feminists and male-to-female transgender persons more than 40 years later.[39][40]

In an article published in the Jewish Women's Archive, Morgan identifies her religion as Wiccan and/or atheist. She is quoted as saying, "I am deeply opposed to all patriarchal religions, including though not limited to Judaism."[41] Morgan continues to tackle topics such as religion, politics and sex in fiery commentaries on her radio show "WMC Live with Robin Morgan."[42]

Personal life

Robin Morgan lives in Manhattan.[5] Her son Blake Morgan, (with ex-husband Kenneth Pitchford) is a musician, recording artist, and founder of New York-based record company ECR Music Group.

In 2000 Norton published Morgan’s memoir, Saturday's Child, in which she wrote candidly about "the shadowy circumstances of her birth; a lifelong, impassioned, love-hate relationship with her mother; her years as a famous child actor and her fight to escape show business to become a serious writer; her marriage to a fiery bisexual poet and how motherhood transformed her life; her years in the civil rights movement, the New Left, and counterculture; her emergence a leader of global feminism; and her love affairs with women as well as men," according to BookNews.com.[43] In her book, "her passion for writing, especially poetry, is vividly conveyed, as is her love and respect for her son, born in 1969," according to The New York Times Book Review.[44]

In April 2013, Morgan announced publicly that she had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, discussing the diagnosis on her radio show WMC Live with Robin Morgan,[45] revealing that she had been diagnosed in 2010, but that her quality of life was thus far "normal."[46] Since her diagnosis, Morgan has become active with the Parkinson's Disease Foundation (PDF), completing training to become part of the organization's Parkinson's Advocates in Research initiative.[47] In 2014 she was the catalyst and took a leadership role in PDF's new Women and PD initiative, which will seek to better serve women impacted by Parkinson's disease by understanding and resolving gender inequalities in PD research, treatment, and caregiver support.[48] Morgan has also written new poetry inspired by her battle with the disease, and performed a reading of some of the poems as a TED Talk, at the TEDWomen 2015 conference.[49]

Filmography

1940s
1950s
Other

Publications

Poetry

Nonfiction

Fiction

Anthologies

Essays

Plays

References

  1. 1 2 Diefendork, Elizabeth. "The New York Public Library's Books of the Century". New York Public Library. Retrieved March 3, 2012.
  2. ↑ "Robin Morgan". eNotes. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 Morgan, Robin (2001). Saturday's Child: A Memoir'. W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-05015-7.
  4. 1 2 Morgan, Robin (1978). Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist. Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-394-72612-0.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Bio". RobinMorgan.com. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
  6. 1 2 Rich, Adrienne (December 31, 1972). ""Voices in the Wilderness," in Book World: Review of Monster: Poems". The Washington Post. Retrieved March 3, 2012.
  7. ↑ Wulf, Steve (2015-03-23). "Supersisters: Original Roster". Espn.go.com. Retrieved 2015-06-04.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 "Robin Morgan". Jewish Women's Archive. 2005. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
  9. ↑ http://wmclive.com
  10. 1 2 "Herstory", Oxford English Dictionary Online (Oxford University Press, 2006).
  11. ↑ "Dry Your Smile". Ms. Magazine. March 30, 2011. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
  12. ↑ "Robin Morgan". Answers.com. Retrieved March 3, 2012.
  13. 1 2 Levy, Ariel (April 21, 2008). "Goodbye Again". The New Yorker. Retrieved March 3, 2012.
  14. ↑ Willis, Pat (December 2007). "Robin Morgan, 2007 Humanist Heroine". The Humanist. Retrieved March 3, 2012.
  15. ↑ "Steinem, Fonda, Morgan: Limbaugh ‘not constitutionally entitled to the people’s airways’". The Daily Caller. March 12, 2012. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
  16. ↑ "Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem Call For FCC to Ban Rush Limbaugh". The Wall Street Journal. March 13, 2012. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
  17. ↑ Morgan, Robin (March 12, 2012). "FCC should clear Limbaugh from airwaves". CNN. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
  18. ↑ Brain, Norman (2006). "The Consciousness-Raising Document, Feminist Anthologies, and Black Women in Sisterhood is Powerful". A Journal of Women Studies 27 (3): 38–64.
  19. ↑ Battle-Sister, Ann (1971). "Review of ‘A Tyrant’s Plea,’ Dominated Man by Albert Memmi; Born Female by Caroline Bird; Sisterhood is Powerful by Robin Morgan". Journal of Marriage and Family 33 (3): 592–597. doi:10.2307/349862.
  20. ↑ http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.stockton.edu:2048/stable/349862
  21. 1 2 Robin Morgan (1 November 2007). Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium. Simon and Schuster. pp. 18–. ISBN 978-1-4165-9576-2.
  22. ↑ "Background". The Sisterhood is Global Institute. Retrieved March 3, 2012.
  23. ↑ "Library Resource Finder: Table of Contents for: Sisterhood is forever : the women's anth". Vufind.carli.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
  24. 1 2 3 4 "Robin Morgan". Women's Media Center. Retrieved March 3, 2012.
  25. ↑ "Dry Your Smile". RobinMorgan.com. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
  26. ↑ "The Burning Time". RobinMorgan.us. 2006. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
  27. 1 2 http://www.soapboxinc.com/speakers/robin-morgan/
  28. 1 2 3 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/544191.Monster
  29. ↑ https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/robin-morgan
  30. ↑ http://www.robinmorgan.net/
  31. ↑ "Ironic Feminism, Empathic Activism: Robin Morgan's Saturday's Child". Ms. Magazine. March 30, 2001. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
  32. 1 2 http://www.robinmorgan.net/book/the-burning-time/
  33. ↑ "Robin Morgan Bio". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-14.
  34. ↑ http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Lover-Roots-Terrorism/dp/0743452933
  35. ↑ http://sigi.org/about-2/
  36. 1 2 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/sep/08/usa.gender
  37. ↑ http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/21/goodbye-again
  38. ↑ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/missamerica/peopleevents/e_feminists.html
  39. ↑ "What is a woman?". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2012-10-22.
  40. ↑ http://theterfs.com/2013/10/12/1973-west-coast-terfs/
  41. ↑ http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/morgan-robin
  42. ↑ http://www.womensmediacenter.com/press/entry/womens-media-center-live-with-robin-morgan-reaches-100-show-milestone
  43. ↑ http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/saturdays-child-robin-morgan/1101993109?ean=9780393050158#productInfoTabs
  44. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/26/bib/001126.rv103725.html
  45. ↑ "Robin Morgan: Agent of Change for Women with Parkinson's". Real Women on Health. Retrieved 8 January 2015.
  46. ↑ Morgan, Robin. "WMC Live #33". Women's Media Center. Retrieved 8 January 2015.
  47. ↑ "PAIR: Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan" (PDF). Parkinson's Disease Foundation.
  48. ↑ Morgan, Robin. "Women & Parkinson’s Disease: Understanding this Specific Journey" (PDF). Parkinson's Disease Foundation. Retrieved 8 January 2015.
  49. ↑ https://www.ted.com/talks/robin_morgan_4_powerful_poems_about_parkinson_s_and_growing_older?language=en
  50. ↑ https://archive.org/details/TalesOfTomorrow-AChildIsCrying_607
  51. ↑ Video on YouTube

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