Word: wasps
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...decision about Commencement will not be a difficult one, for Wilkerson has grappled with the polarities of the dance world and "the Harvard tradition" for four years. Dance is "ultimate freedom," and Harvard is "the epitomy of WASP values," she says. This contrast has led her to contemplate with-drawing from the University twice and to defer indefinitely her acceptance to the Stanford joint JD and MBA program...
Wilkerson grew up in the midst of the "WASP society" of Shaker Heights, Ohio where "knee-jerk liberal" attitudes protected her from "blatant" exposure to racism. Her father is a doctor, her mother has a masters degree and is a homemaker. Being Black presented no disadvantages for Wilkerson. The children took every kind of lesson they wanted--Wilkerson studied ballet, gymnastics and skating--and they were "expected to bring home...
...Back in WASP society once again, she changed her major to economics, and the next summer landed a job at Solomon Brothers, a Wall Street investment firm. On and off crutches most of junior year, she was able by the summer to start taking dance lessons at night after work. That summer she rushed to work in the morning in her pumps with a Wall Street Journal tucked under her arm. After work she would try to "de-bank" herself, changing into sandals and carrying her dance magazines as she rushed off to class...
Gemini depicts two days in Francis's life, using his 21st birthday and the unexpected arrival of his rich, WASP girlfriend and her brother, both from Harvard, as an occasion for Big Scenes--confrontations, explosions, parties, reminiscences and attempts at suicide. It is a comedy steeped in pain and bathos, a marvelous, overpowering--yet enormously funny--spectacle of man's capacity for self-dramatization...
...other tales, a couple trying to submerge their heritage in a Wasp suburb are threatened by an old yenta; if they do not give money to her charities, she will expose them to the smothering tolerance and curiosity of the Christian community. "On Passover," she warns, "you will be the Jew on the fellowship committee; you will explain in the schools, you will explain in the churches, you will bare your souls in the Cultural Exchange Fellowship of the Women's Auxiliaries ..." And a mother meditates caustically on the thought processes of her two teen-age children: "Instant communication...