About this item
In the early 1960s, most middle-class American women in their twenties had their lives laid out for them: marriage, children, and life in the suburbs. Most, but not all.Breathless is the story of a girl who represents those who rebelled against conventional expectations. Paris was a magnet for those eager to resist domesticity, and like many young women of the decade, Nancy K. Miller was enamored of everything French—from perfume and Hermès scarves to the writing of Simone de Beauvoir and the New Wave films of Jeanne Moreau. After graduating from Barnard College in 1961, Miller set out for a year in Paris, with a plan to take classes at the Sorbonne and live out a great romantic life inspired by the movies.After a string of sexual misadventures, she gave up her short-lived freedom and married an American expatriate who promised her a lifetime of three-star meals and five-star hotels.
About the Author
Part memoir, part biography, My Brilliant Friends: Our Lives in Feminism is the narrative of my bonds with Carolyn Heilbrun, Naomi Schor, and Diane Middlebrook over the intense decades sparked by the zest of seventies feminism. In my return to our shared past, I tell the story of our friendships, and what I owe these three brilliant women who transformed my life for the better, and whom I loved.Nancy K. Miller has written, edited or co-edited more than a dozen volumes, including Getting Personal, Bequest and Betrayal, But Enough About Me, What They Saved, and Breathless: An American Girl in Paris.
