Full Circles, Overlapping Lives: Culture and Generation in Transition Book

We live with strangers, not only in the streets and in the workplace, but in our very own homes. There are great differences between us—even when we belong to the same family, race, class, or sex. Full Circles, Overlapping Lives, Mary Catherine Bateson challenges us to rethink our lives at every stage of the life cycle, to question expected roles and relationships and to discover new possibilities.

Bateson eloquently weaves together the words of a diverse group of remarkable women whom she taught at Spelman College. Their stories tell of individual discovery and creative improvisation, and sow how even the home can be a training ground for dealing with differences and learning to communicate across generations. She juxtaposes their lives with life histories from around the worldûfrom !Kung tribeswomen to sharecroppers and recent immigrants—to show the commonality between experiences which may, at first, seem very different, and to demonstrate how evolving definitions of identity, commitment, and fulfillment can allow for new and greater understanding.

About the Author:
Mary Catherine Bateson is the Clarence J. Robinson Professor in Anthropology and English at George Mason University. She is the author of numerous books, including the bestseller Composing a Life and the memoir about her parents, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, With a Daughter's Eye.

New York Times Book Review

A thoroughly absorbing an enlightening book. One that deserves to be enjoyed by people of both sexes and all ages.