Out of My Shoes

Out of My Shoes weaves together events from the life of the narrator who grew up during the 1940's and '50's in a sheltered Southern California environment. While attending Vassar College, she meets an Ivy League graduate from a wealthy New York family whom she marries in 1955 during her senior year. After graduation, Meredith becomes a traditional faculty wife and mother in Berkeley, California, where she raises her family.

Troubled by her life as a privileged white woman, she eventually leaves her marriage to pursue her interests in photography, writing, and social activism. She meets Jayda, a formerly homeless African-American woman poet with whom she designs and produces a multimedia performance about homeless women and children. When Meredith invites Jayda on a vacation road trip, their complex friendship with its racial and sensual tensions intensifies and they become romantically involved. Their artistic collaboration and relationship, which ends with the death of the poet, is at the heart of this story of mid-life creative awakening.

A multi-layered memoir of transformation, Out of My Shoes intertwines issues of class and race in these compelling stories, both poignant and humorous, that it tells honestly as the narrator struggles to shed past rigidities, find a new identity, and take risks.