Foster was a gifted child, and learned to read at the age of three.[4][7] She attended a French-language prep school, the Lycée Français de Los Angeles.[7] Her fluency in French has enabled her to act in French films, and she also dubs herself in French-language versions of most of her English-language films.[4][11][12] She also understands Italian although does not speak it,[13] as well as a little Spanish[14] and German.[15] At her graduation in 1980, she delivered the valedictorian address for the school's French division.[7] Although already a successful actor by this time, Foster then attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.[8][16] She majored in literature, writing her thesis on Toni Morrison, and graduated with a magna cum laude in 1985.[4][17][18] She returned to Yale in 1993 to address the graduating class, and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the university in 1997
Volume 17, Issue 1, February 2003, Pages 113–128
Fashioning Age: Cultural Narratives of Later Life
The uninvited guest: mother/daughter conflict in feminist gerontology
Abstract
In
this paper, I argue that the tensions between generations of
women—particularly mothers and daughters—can be used to initiate change
and growth for both generations. I introduce the subject of
developmental conflict between women through fictional images from a
Scottish film called The Winter Guest and then show how these
conflicts have occurred in my own ethnographic research on older women. I
argue that feminist gerontologists need to be working—always on the
personal and professional levels—to recognize, explore,
understand, critique, and theorize generational differences among women.
Otherwise, we are at risk of promoting the very sexist and ageist
attitudes that we are ostensibly working against. My aim is to alert
readers to the generational conflicts that can occur in empirical
research, as well as in the politics and theorizing of academic
feminism, when women act unconsciously from generational positions or
“age identities” that precondition them to challenge and resist each
other. I conclude that mothers and daughters need alternative models for
relating to one another outside the “family plot” and suggest that life
story groups might help us develop these collaboratively.
Keywords
- Generational culture;
- Age identity;
- Humanistic gerontology;
- Feminist gerontology;
- Ethnography and aging;
- Intergenerational storytelling
- Tel.:
+1-313-577-7696.
Copyright © 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
Ruth
Ray is Professor of English and faculty associate in gerontology at
Wayne State University in Detroit. Her areas of interest include
feminist theory and praxis, intergenerational learning, women's writing
groups, and late-life autobiography. She is currently at work on a book
of stories about love, sex, and friendship in late life, based on her
ethnographic research in nursing homes.
