EXPERIENCE IS THE ANGLED ROAD

Gitenstein reflects on growing up Jewish in the Deep South, a groundbreaking career in academia, and living with a chronic illness.

The author, an accomplished academic and university administrator, was born in 1948 to Anna and Seymour Gitenstein. Anna and Seymour, both born and raised in New York City, married in 1943 and lived in Florala, Alabama, where Seymour ran the family shirt and underwear factory, and they were one of the few Jewish families in the county. The differences in their personalities led to a marriage “that likely never satisfied either of them but that tied them to one another in love and need for the rest of their lives,” per the author. Other defining influences included her siblings, her maternal grandmother and aunt, administrators at the Holton-Arms School, and professors at Duke University, UNC Chapel Hill, SUNY-Oswego, and Drake University. Don Hart, her husband and fellow Florala native, shines as a key source of support in her life. Together, they navigated parental disapproval of their marriage, institutional sexism and antisemitism, the vagaries of life in the academic world, and lifelong health issues. Gitenstein’s generous acknowledgments of those who mentored her, along with her stellar achievements (including becoming the first woman president of the College of New Jersey), will resonate with readers who have been ensconced in academia. All readers will appreciate the honesty with which the author writes about living with ulcerative colitis and the difficult choices involved in managing the disease. (“Anyone who has survived or learned to manage a chronic disease without becoming an invalid understands the bravery and will embedded in these choices.”) The compassion Gitenstein shows when writing about her parents—she lost her mother to early Alzheimer’s, starting in the late 1970s, and notes that “like so many men of his generation, Dad lived in denial about his homosexuality”—is moving. References drawn from years of written correspondence add further insight to this fascinating memoir.

An honest and compassionate look back at a life of accomplishment.