Description

True North: A Memoir by Jill Ker Conway (1995 ed.)

In True North, Jill Ker Conway recounts her remarkable journey from an isolated sheep station in rural Australia to becoming one of the most influential academic leaders in the United States. Raised in a rigid, male‑dominated environment after the early death of her father, Conway grows up determined to pursue education and independence in a world that offers women few paths forward.

Denied access to graduate study in Australia because of her gender, Conway emigrates to the United States, where she forges a groundbreaking career as a historian and eventually becomes the first woman president of Smith College. Along the way, she confronts cultural dislocation, professional barriers, and deeply ingrained expectations about women’s roles, learning to navigate power, identity, and ambition on her own terms.

Clear‑eyed, elegant, and deeply reflective, True North is both a personal coming‑of‑age story and a broader meditation on feminism, leadership, and self‑definition. It remains a landmark memoir of intellectual courage and the search for purpose across continents and cultures.

Copyright: Originally published in 1994. This paperback copy was published by Vintage Books in  1995 with cover art including “NATIONAL BESTSELLER” and “The author of The Road from Coorain continues her journey in this ‘wonderful book’” – Washington Post Book World“.

Condition: Good. Vintage. Ex Libris.

ISBN-10: 0679420991

ISBN-13: 9780679420996

Dewey Decimal: 920.72