After Joan’s death in February 2010, my brothers and I found hundreds of poems and a number of journals from the 1930s and 1940s, composed by her starting from when she was 9 years old in 1932. I transcribed and edited her diaries from 1937-1943. These journals cover the years from when she was 14 to 20 and are published as a Young Adult History book from Chicago Review Press. It was a therapeutic exercise, but now it is (I hope) the kind of tribute she’d want.
More about Susan, who edited her mom’s diaries
Susan Signe Morrison writes on topics lurking in the margins of history, ranging from recently uncovered diaries of a teenaged girl in World War II to medieval women pilgrims, excrement in the Middle Ages, and waste. Susan is Professor of English at Texas State University.
Susan as snapped by her teenage son.
Susan has recently written her first novel, Grendel’s Mother: The Saga of the Wyrd-Wife, which is a feminist reinterpretation of the Old English classic poem, Beowulf. It has been shortlisted for the 2014-15 Sarton Literary Award for Historical Fiction. Telling the story from the point of view of the women, Susan grew up in New Jersey by the Great Swamp, a National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey with terrain not unlike that of Grendel’s Mother’s mere in Beowulf.
Susan signing books at the Texas Book Festival.
Committed to bringing the lives of medieval women to a wider audience and making the ethics of waste fundamental to our study of literature, Susan can be found blogging at homefrontgirldiary.com, grendelsmotherthenovel.com, and amedievalwomanscompanion.com. Susan tweets @medievalwomen.
You can read more at Susan’s Amazon page and at susansignemorrison.com.
Home Front Girl 