Author Susannah Kennedy‘s memoir will be published September 12, 2023, by new women’s publishing company Sibylline Press. Kennedy was a student at U.C. Berkeley and earned her BA with honors in political science in 1985.
Daring to “read” Jane-45 years of her mother’s hidden diaries-after Jane’s death is like unlatching Pandora’s Box. For a year, Susannah reads, twisting and turning to the truths she uncovers, comparing what she remembers with what her mother put down in words. Through revelations about her father and the years in India and New York, about the fight not to be too tall, about the flash of cigarettes, about modeling and teenage first loves and her mother’s secret lovers, and their disagreement about answering a baby’s cry, Susannah reads and fills out the details of her own life against the strange pull of her mother’s public tale.
Berkeley and Oxford-educated anthropologist Susannah Kennedy was born in India before returning to the US, the only child of an ill-fated alcoholic journalist and a larger-than-life inner-city teacher. As an adult, Kennedy traveled extensively on her own, first in Italy, and then through the Middle East and India, settling for two years in Egypt before moving as a reporter to Dallas, Texas. At Oxford University, she specialized in Arab culture and politics, receiving her DPhil in social anthropology.
Book signing and reading events are planned for the Bay Area and beyond.
