Sisters in Reading: A Page From the Millennial Book Club

The Millennial Book Club was established in Baltimore on Jan. 9, 2000 in my apartment. Three of the six founders were Baltimore Sun reporters, and the other three were "found" through the newspaper. The then-editor, John Carroll, introduced me to Laura, a cheerful arrival in town from Chicago, and she and I started the club.

Now we are nine -- making a full house on the 9th of January, 2010 as we gathered round Laura's fireplace. We discussed "The Awakening," an 1899 American classic by Kate Chopin. Champagne made spirits sparkle at the 10-year mark. Four founding members were among us, none of them still with the BaltSun. Meanwhile, we've developed the conceit that all fiction is autobiographical and all autobiography is fiction. Yet, the memoir is a favorite literary form. In June, we'll contrast two African-American memoirs, Helene Cooper's haunting "The House at Sugar Beach" (2008) and Barack Obama's lyrical "Dreams From My Father" (1995.) Born to the same generation, they told their compelling life stories young; now Cooper covers the president for The New York Times.

As I reflected on our decade together, I thought about how much I've grown to love this club. I see it now as my modest way of keeping faith with women's lives, stories and voices, creating something like a literary patchwork quilt, sewn with stitches of friendship. In a decade, I think of how far we have come, with some 100 books shared and about 10 authors as guests of honor. A few things about book clubs: they don't cost anything to belong, they stimulate the mind, and they open new worlds to you.

Years ago, we read the late publisher Katharine Graham's autobiographical "Personal History," a privileged walk through the 20th century marked by finely remembered details about her brilliant husband's suicide and publishing the Watergate stories, as they unfolded, in The Washington Post. Recently, we read "The Glass Castle" Jeannette Walls' true account of growing up in West Virginia and on the road with eccentric, impecunious parents who kept their children guessing.

That first day, with a high sense of history, I started the journal we keep of every book, every meeting, every house venue and every event of note in our lives. Some of my handwritten invitations and napkins are kept as mementos, tucked in with photos of us enjoying the English summer pudding that's become a tradition. Six babies were born under our Millennial watch. A Pulitzer Prize was won. An engagement was broken and another was not. Before Erika departed for Russia to be a foreign correspondent, I served a French apple tarte at her fare-thee-well. (The novel that day: "The Kite Runner.")

The Millennial journal is practically promised to the Maryland Historical Society as a cultural document. As time passed, we went inter-generational with Barbara and Leslie (best friends since they were young) in their 70s, another member in her late 30s and six of us in our 40s. So you see, a sisterhood. "A fountain of friendship," I wrote on Jan. 9, 2005, glad the lovely, sage social worker Barbara had joined us -- when she heard me talking about the club with Gerald, our shared hair stylist. Yes, Baltimore is that kind of town.

Hey, it was the least we could do. The post-Boomer generation has done close to zero but keep our maiden names (see my colleague Joann Weiner's thoughts on this) and start women's book clubs. Let's call it a post-modern and perhaps post-feminist shared space and time. But is sisterhood as powerful as it used to be? No, ma'am.

We were the direct beneficiaries of President Bill Clinton's first bill signed into law 17 years ago, the Family and Medical Leave Act. But my friends don't even know that. We were also the first generation to have all the Ivy League universities and the military academies open to us -- not to mention colleges like Amherst and Williams going co-ed. Professional schools were much more welcoming to us than any previous generation of American women. Michelle Robinson Obama exemplifies the privileges that were finally extended to us because of the women's movement of the 1970s, not to mention the suffragettes who won the right to vote in 1920. It was all there just waiting for us, but we were the generation with a whisper. In other words, we haven't advanced a collective cause for our daughters and on down the line by championing a social, political or economic women's issue and making a difference. The world isn't perfect yet. For example, I just learned today that equal representation in the population, only 17% of members of Congress are women.

Millennials came face to face with this fact when we discussed "Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World," three years ago. The author, Linda R. Hirshman, urges well-educated, affluent women (like us) not to leave the workforce midstream to raise children. Provocative and to the point, the essay upset our Pulitzer Prize winner, an extremely talented, sensitive soul who had her small son with her and would focus on family for the next couple of years. On the other hand, another member who is a curator said she is a better mother to her daughter when she's working than not. Leading the discussion, our mediator/lawyer, Louise, weathered the storm of a delicate subject well, but the session showed me how we are a bellwether of our times.

A member whom I depend upon for good ideas -- such as re-reading her beloved "Jane Eyre" -- was mysteriously absent from our January meeting. This elegant woman, let's call her A -- shares my love of the late 18th century and handwritten notes. Just my cup of Earl Grey tea. In discussing the character Jane Eyre, we identified her as the first autobiographical heroine in the English novel - unless you count the shades of Jane Austen in "Persuasion." So when I got home from book clubbing, I read the reason why we missed her: seems the pool opens in a matter of weeks. She had a work-out to do with a Brazilian bikini video because, as she put it, "I am determined to wear a bikini this summer."

Somewhere, governess Jane Eyre and novelist Jane Austen are swooning and reaching for their smelling salts. Sisterhood may not be as powerful as it used to be. But we try.