About the book: 2021 / In the fall of 1960, the prestigious Radcliffe College for Women, one of Harvard’s “Seven Sisters,” opened a scholarship program that had no analogues in the world for... mothers. From this point on, Radcliffe became a center for the development of feminist art and thought, giving new impetus to the movement for the emancipation of women in America. Maggie Doherty's book tells the story of this unique project. It focuses on the lives of five college fellows who formed the Equivalents group: poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin, writer Tillie Olsen, artist Barbara Swan, and sculptor Marianna Pineda. The group members challenged the patriarchal “American happiness” of the early 1960s, in which the ideal woman was a well-groomed housewife serving a cozy home and a large family. The Radcliffe Program has helped many women realize their artistic ambitions, and Doherty's book is a moving account of a women's professional and creative community the likes of which have never been seen in American history. Maggie Doherty is a writer and literary critic, teaching at Harvard University. The author's articles have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Nation and others..