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Barnard Honors Famous Alumnae, Entertainer Joan Rivers, Author Jhumpa Lahiri, at Reunion Weekend
From left: Jhumpa Lahiri, President Judith Shapiro, and Joan Rivers |
Barnard honored two of its famous alumnae, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri and entertainer Joan Rivers , during College Reunion weekend June 5. Rivers was named this year's Woman of Achievement and Lahiri was presented with the Young Alumna Award.
Barnard President Judith Shapiro, at a gala dinner, noted Lahiri's swift rise to recognition as one of the country's most talented young writers, including winning the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2000 for her first collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies.
" Once you set out to be a serious writer, it didn't take long for the world to recognize your talents," said Shapiro. "The New Yorker showcased your work, and in 1999 named you one of the best young authors of our time. In 2000, you won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Interpreter of Maladies , a stunning collection of poignant, brilliantly crafted stories. You reacted to this honor, and the enormous attention it brought, with modesty, thoughtfulness and grace, and continued to keep a clear focus on your work. Three years later, your first novel, The Namesake , was published, also to immense critical and popular acclaim."
 Lahiri, a 1989 Barnard graduate, told the gathering: "Barnard was the ideal place to learn to accomplish what is possible, while remaining aware of, and perhaps even aspiring toward, the seemingly impossible. What I took away from Barnard wasn't so much what I ought to do with my life, but how I ought to approach it."
Turning next to Rivers, Shapiro said: "And now I would like to call to the podium Joan Molinsky Rosenberg, aka Joan Rivers.
"As a student you exhibited the same intelligence, talent, versatility and drive that brought you extraordinary success later in life," said Shapiro. "You were a serious actress, and starred in one campus production after another. I wish I could have seen you as Juno in Juno and the Paycock, as Lady Markby in An Ideal Husband , or as Emilia in Othello !"
Shapiro noted Rivers' successful career as a stand-up comic - a world that remains a challenge for women - and recited her further accomplishments in an eclectic career: "Emmy-winning TV talk-show host; Tony-nominated Broadway actress; Grammy-nominated comedy recording star; best-selling author; playwright, television and film writer; jewelry designer and entrepreneur; and queen of the red carpet. Entertainer, businesswoman, devoted mother and grandmother--you are an inspiration to us all," said Shapiro.
Rivers said: "I am not a woman of achievement. I am a woman of determination - as all Barnard women are."
She continued: "At other colleges students say 'I want to be an actress, I want to be an artist, I want to be a scientist.' At Barnard, students say, 'I am an actress. I am an artist. I am a scientist.'
Rivers recalled in a recent interview: "I adored every minute of Barnard. It was a transitional moment for women and Barnard let you do everything."
Rivers credits her Barnard education for helping shape who she is. A successful businesswoman who sells a line of fragrances, jewelry, and skin-care products on the QVC channel, both nationally and internationally as well as her 40-year career in show business.
She got her start on the Barnard stage. "I lived and breathed every production you could do at Barnard," she says.
 After graduation, Rivers started working the comedy circuit. By 1965, she had appeared on "The Tonight Show." She'd eventually become the first permanent guest host on the late-night program- no small feat for any comedian, let alone a female comedian. From 1987 to 1989, she hosted her own late-night talk show on Fox. From 1989 to 1994, she hosted her own daytime talk show, which won an Emmy Award. She has written five books and two Broadway plays, one of which was nominated for a Tony Award.
Rivers, who used to hang out in Greenwich Village with Woody Allen, George Carlin, Bill Cosby, and Richard Pryor, says she was the last of her group to break through. "Looking back, I never thought it was because I was a woman, but comedy is really a man's profession."
Lahiri is recognized worldwide for stories that let readers intimately know and relate to the cultural transitions experienced by Indian immigrants to the United States and the identity conflicts with which their children struggle. Her second book and first novel, The Namesake (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003), is a bestseller about a boy, Gogol Ganguli, whose pet name becomes his public name, and who feels burdened by the strangeness of it.
When Lahiri graduated from Barnard 15 years ago with a degree in English, she never thought she'd become a fiction writer who, at 33, won a Pulitzer for her first book. She started out on a different track--one that led to three master's degrees and a Ph.D. in Renaissance studies from Boston University--but now she's on the syllabus more often than she creates one.
"I feel a sense of real continuity from my Barnard days," she says. She's still in New York and still close to her Barnard faculty advisor, Timea Szell. Now a mother, Lahiri says she and her freshman roommate live in the same neighborhood in Brooklyn and are "raising our children at the same time, meeting at the playground, trading baby clothes back and forth, etc."
But when she re-considers the twists of her life after Barnard, she acknowledges that her work is far different from what she thought it would be. "It was certainly an indication that years had passed when I found myself teaching, rather than taking, a class on the fourth floor of Barnard Hall." Last October she was among the featured authors in the Barnard Books Etc . author's series (See a video of her reading at www.barnard.edu/writers.)
For more information, please contact: Suzanne Trimel in the Barnard Office of Public Affairs, 212-854-7583, strimel@barnard.edu
Click here for more photos from Reunion 2004. |
