As the death of Ann Snitow sinks in, people are sharing memories. One, which I suspect will resonate with everyone who knew her:
[Ella Boureau:] There was nothing like being invited over to Ann’s house to see her standing in the doorway, waiting to accept me with a big bear hug and an “Oh, my darling Ella!” There was nothing like the anticipation of the moment she’d sit across from me, arranging her long legs, before saying, “Now tell me,” her eyes serious and head cocked to suggest that her question was of the utmost importance: “What are you thinking about these days?”
Another confirms that her interest was as true as true can be:
[Sarah Leonard:] She was skeptical of hard categories like, for example, “woman.” For some, reflexive skepticism might lead to a sort of academic cul-de-sac. But Ann’s questioning led her not to hopelessness or inaction but to expansiveness. When queer politics was becoming a bigger force at the New School, Ann was thrilled: “The idea that gender is a construct, a performance, moved to the center of feminism . . . It was opening up the whole question of why we have organized the world in this rigid way. And, you know, I love that,” she told me. This attitude pervaded her relationship with younger feminists, to whom she provided invaluable guidance, but also listened. She is the only person I’ve ever met who seemed unthreatened by the dissolution of the categories that were fundamental to her field and by that field’s reshaping by successive generations. She delighted in change.
Yes, it was about delight.
[Vivian Gornick:] She had the great gift of making everyone she encountered—from the closest friend to the merest acquaintance—feel themselves not only a person of worth but of delight. While you occupied her field of vision she seemed to be thinking, “This is an enchanting creature, I could happily go on talking to her alone for a year or two.” This gift was intimately related to the pleasure she took in being alive, and in a world whose every aspect she found attractive, deeply attractive. She was the only political person I’ve ever known whose organizing powers stemmed from the fact that she found everything in the world endearing—and I mean everything: people, politics, literature, food, gardens, movies, Polish dolls and Moroccan rugs, Doris Lessing and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And then of course there was her abiding love of the feminist movement, evoking for more than fifty years joy and amusement, anger and outrage, hope and anxiety. But not despair, never despair. Because hers was a great soul, and great souls hold it all together for the sake of that beloved world, the thought of whose salvation they never abandon. We shall not soon see her like again.
