LITMIR.BIZ

      Acknowledgments

      In circumstances like these families are usually the last to be thanked, implying that domestic functions, the cooking and shopping and laundry and cleaning that support life, are a lesser contribution to intellectual work than is labor in the realm of ideas. How untrue that is! Without them, everything else would grind to a cataclysmic halt. My own domestic sphere supported me liberally while I wrote this book and also was the site of some of my most exciting encounters with ideas.

      Almost two decades ago Becky Jenkins, Toni King, and I joined together to build an extended household which has nurtured us, and quite a few other people, in both corporeal and intellectual ways. My frequent trips to the East left Toni and Becky to pick up the pieces, running a complex household and fending for an extended community. Becky took over much of my therapy practice in my absences, a very lucky break for my clients. Becky and I have thought together for many years; one of my greatest joys in life is to think out loud with her, and I am sure after all this time that there is not a single thing I do think that is not a joint production. Toni has the rare knack of going unerringly to the heart of the matter, raising the key question with a kind of humble simplicity that, even after all these years, always has the power to stagger me. Her confidence in my abilities also once startled me, but by now I've gratefully integrated it into my determination to work onward. My sons, Tuhin and Joshua, too, continually advance my thinking, urging me, sometimes forcing me, to open my mind to new views of life. Tuhin is my most compelling link with Bengal, and I especially treasure the times he has been with me there.

      I became a university student at the same time Tuhin matriculated. A grey-haired woman with an evolved and busy life, I longed for the luxury of fighting necessity back far enough to think a thought through to its conclusion. The notion of being a student again after years of teaching delighted me. I wanted to sit at the feet of a mentor, to learn new skills of scholarship, and to widen my intellectual community. I felt too comfortable in my own; I wanted the challenges of disagreement and of fresh points of view.

      At the same time, I was crusty and opinionated, and I felt some skepticism about what I'd find in that bastion of establishment, The Academy. In the event, I was surprised and gratified. During my first semester in the sociology department at Berkeley, I headed for a class on race in America, because I figured I'd meet people there who shared a certain set of social concerns. The strategy paid off handsomely, for Bob Blauner taught that course. I quickly came to value highly both his principles and his approaches to scholarship. Among many other contributions, Bob pioneered oral history as a method for academic research. Talking with “real” people is a touchstone, and time and again Bob has helped to bring me back from flights of rhetoric to the position of careful attention to what people say and do that (I hope) characterizes this study. His critical questions, always so respectful, helped me to focus my interests, and his encouragement of oddball ways of thinking and working has cheered me on throughout the years I've spent on this project.

      At the same time that

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