{"product_id":"a-born-writer-juanita-harrison-and-her-beautiful-world-9781625348999","title":"A Born Writer: Juanita Harrison and Her Beautiful World","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe first biography of a best-selling travel writer dedicated to the pursuit of leisure, freedom, and experience\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Despite the challenges she faced as an average southern Black woman of her time, Juanita Harrison transcended expectations, earning a unique place in African American and literary history. Over the course of more than four decades, she traveled constantly, first throughout the US and then throughout the world. To fund her trips, she took on short-term jobs as housekeeper, cook, and nurse, never committing to any one household. Always on the move, she made it a rule to travel alone, and she had a penchant for \"passing,\" not as white but as local. Her wanderlust was less aspirational and upwardly mobile than dedicated to the pursuit of leisure, freedom, and experience. \"It's my life to see and enjoy,\" she declared. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e In 1936, she published \u003ci\u003eMy Great, Wide, Beautiful World\u003c\/i\u003e, a travelogue that charts her life between 1927 and 1935\u003ci\u003e.\u003c\/i\u003e A compilation of letters she sent to friends, employers, and patrons during her travels, the book was an immediate success, running through nine printings within ten months and becoming a bestseller for that year. The illustrious \u003ci\u003eAtlantic Monthly\u003c\/i\u003e published excerpts, the book was reviewed in newspapers and magazines nationwide, and it attracted a remarkably diverse readership, sparking the enthusiasm of Black working-class library patrons, white women's book clubs, Japanese American journalists, Harlem Renaissance luminaries, and many others. It came back into print in 1996, ensuring her legacy would endure. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003ci\u003eA Born Writer\u003c\/i\u003e is the first biography of this fascinating woman who found a uniquely rewarding way to live and work that many would envy today. Combining micro histories, literary criticism, and biography-and despite limited archival records-Cathryn Halverson skillfully traces Harrison from her birth in the bitterly divided South to her death in Hawai'i, tracking her varied experiences along the way in New York, Havana, Paris, Madrid, Cairo, Mumbai, Kobe, Buenos Aires, and many other places. The resulting portrait shows a woman who transcended all kinds of borders-political, social, and cultural-to experience a freedom rarely available to women, and especially women of color, in the early-to-mid twentieth century, an achievement that continues to resonate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eCATHRYN HALVERSON\u003c\/b\u003e is senior lecturer in English and American Literature at Linköping University. She is the author of \u003ci\u003eFaraway Women and The Atlantic Monthly\u003c\/i\u003e, which won the Thomas J. Lyon Book Award from the Western Literature Association; \u003ci\u003ePlaying House in the American West: Western Women's Life Narratives, 1889-1987\u003c\/i\u003e; and \u003ci\u003eMaverick Autobiographies: Women Writers and the American West, 1902-1936\u003c\/i\u003e. Her scholarship has appeared in \u003ci\u003eCollege Literature\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eWestern American Literature\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eArizona Quarterly\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eJournal X\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eAmerican Studies\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University of Massachusetts Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51749451137298,"sku":"9781625348999","price":38.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_e2cc7cc8-9dd8-462e-a623-825b9fd145f1.jpg?v=1764086210","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/a-born-writer-juanita-harrison-and-her-beautiful-world-9781625348999","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}