“I’ve swallowed a lot of condescension”



American writer Siri Hustvedt.


© ROBERTO RICCIUTI / GETTY
American writer Siri Hustvedt.

“What are you doing in grad school? You look like Grace Kelly.” The phrase that a Columbia professor said to Siri Hustvedt back in the ’70s, when she was a philosophy student looking for a mentor, it stuck with her like a “brain tattoo.” It is one of the anecdotes that Hustvedt (Minnesota, 1955) collects in Mothers, fathers and others. Notes on my royal and literary family (Seix Barral), a collection of essays where she explores from feminism topics as varied as misogyny, the crisis of the literary canon, the lives of her grandmother and her mother, motherhood or the powerful attraction that continues to radiate the work of Louise Bourgeois , Emily Bronte and Jane Austen.

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