Virtual: Wendy Sanford, These Walls Between Us

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In the mid-1950s, an African American teenager named Mary White (now Mary Norman) traveled north from Virginia to work for Wendy’s family as a live-in domestic for their summer vacation by a remote New England beach. Mary was 15, Wendy was 12. As the Black “help” and the privileged white daughter, they were not slated for friendship. Wendy’s family came to depend on Mary’s skilled service. Summer after summer, Mary endured the extreme loneliness of the elite white beachside location in order to supplement her income. Years later—each divorced, each a single-parent, Mary a rising officer in corrections and Wendy a feminist health activist—they began to walk the beach together after dark, talking about their children, their work. A friendship began to grow.

Wendy writes that, “based on decades of visits, phone calls, letters, and texts between Mary Norman and myself,  These Walls Between Us chronicles our friendship, focusing on my oft-stumbling efforts, as a white woman, to see Mary more fully and to become a more dependable friend.”  The book examines obstacles created by Wendy’s upbringing in a narrow, white, upper-class world, reveals realities of domestic service rarely acknowledged by white employers, and draws on classic works by the African American writers whose work informed and challenged Wendy along the way. Wendy lifts up Mary Norman’s enlightened work in corrections in the 1970s and 1980s. Mary has read and commented on every draft.  The two friends hope this story will incite and support white readers to become more informed and accountable friends across the racial divides created by white supremacy and to become active in the movement for racial justice.

Register to join this virtual event on Crowdcast here: https://www.Crowdcast.io/e/TheseWallsBetweenUs