Wendy Sanford
Author, Feminist, Health and Justice Activist
Exploring Issues of Gender, Race and Class with an Aging, White, Cis-gendered, Feminist Quaker. Wendy’s programs this semester will be virtual.
Wendy grew up in an upper middle class white suburban family in Princeton, New Jersey, and attended private schools throughout her life. During the socially turbulent time of the 1970’s, she became a feminist, a lesbian, and a Quaker. A founding member of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, Wendy co-authored and edited many versions of the women’s health and sexuality classic, Our Bodies, Ourselves, from 1973 to 2011. She contributed to the inclusion of trans issues in OBOS, and in later years wrote the Afterword for the first edition of Trans Bodies, Trans Selves.
In her 50s, Wendy began to reckon with her own white skin and the benefits that come to her through being white. In 2003, she earned an MFA in Writing from Vermont College.
In October 2021, She Writes Press published These Walls Between Us: A Memoir of Friendship Across Race and Class. In These Walls, Wendy chronicles her sixty-five-year friendship with Mary Norman, an African American woman who began her work life as a domestic worker in Sanford’s family in the 1950’s. Wendy brings a critical lens to her own upbringing as a white, upper-middle-class female, reveals realities of domestic service rarely acknowledged by white employers, and traces social movements, like multiracial feminism, that made this unlikely friendship possible. Co-created with Mary Norman, the book offers complex portraits of both women, while illuminating the historical and social context of white supremacy culture within which they have sought to become friends.
Topics that Wendy could address during her residency include:
- The vision, publication, and recent history of Our Bodies Ourselves
- The women's health movement and current women's health issues
- The writing journey for her memoir, These Walls Between Us: A Memoir of Friendship Across Race and Class
- Modern challenges for White Feminism
- The role of Quaker spirituality in her personal work for justice and equality.
Wendy will be accompanied by and receive spiritual support from Polly Attwood, her spouse of 42 years. Jude Brandt of Chestnut Hill Meeting and Inspira (Joyce) Williams of Haddonfield Friends Meeting, both members of Friends for LGBTQ Concerns, will serve as Wendy’s elders.
Watch
Public Book Talk on "These Walls Between Us" with Mary Norman (March 21, 2022)
Author Wendy Sanford and Co-Creator Mary Norman are interviewed by Dean Theresa Tensuan about their relationship and the memoir that was many decades in the making.
Public Talk: What is "Women’s Health" (March 24, 2022)
What is "Women's Health" in the context of gender fluidity? Moderated by Director of the Center for Gender Resources and Sexual Education, Sayeeda Rashid, we hear from Wendy Sanford, Trans Bodies Trans Selves Board Member Kelsey Pacha, and Haverford Board of Managers member Petra Doan '77.
Public Talk: On Writing Memoir (March 31, 2022)
A tender and stimulating conversation between authors and memoirists Wendy Sanford and Lori L. Tharps.
