“Reading Lucy” summary

According to Jennifer Egan in “Reading Lucy”, Egan met a friend named Luccile Kolkin, by the old letters from her in Brooklyn Historical Society. By reading Lucy’s letters for her Husband, Egan knew about Lucy’s life and felt there were lots of similarities between Lucy and her, and she really like Lucy’s passion. Both of them liked to write “to-do list”, they live in Brooklyn and they “both work hard and struggled to find time for practical necessities like cleaning and shopping”. In addition, while reading the letters, Egan also tried to guess Lucy’s personalities, what did her like and what did she interest with. Though Lucy’s life, we saw there were a lot of facts which reveal the society in that time. “I (Lucy) went to college. So what. I look for a job and people say, ‘Yes, yes but what can you do?’ ‘Nuttin’ say I.”  This showed the college education did not really matter; people were more willing to employ the men, because “men” are not equal at that time. Just like Minnie, a Negro who wanted to become a fitter in Navy Yard got rejected because she is a woman and a Negro. At the end, by reading Lucy’s life, it helped Egan to approach her Novel researching, a woman worked at Brooklyn Navy yard during WWII.

Reading Lucille Kolkin in the archives

You have just read “Reading Lucy” (Brooklyn Was Mine 2008), an essay by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan. As great as it would be to return to the Brooklyn Historical Society to examine the Kolkin collection that Egan writes about, we can save time and examine some materials online.

A good place to start is the finding aid for the Kolkin collection at BHS. We can also examine two letters available online. We can see a photograph of Lucille Kolkin and three other women she worked with at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, as well as a photo Kolkin took at work. We can also listen to an interview with Lucille Kolkin, since BHS has digitized some of their oral histories.

Please link us to any additional materials you find on Lucille Kolkin or related subjects.

As you consider “Reading Lucy” and these additional materials, consider why they exist, and why they exist where we find them. What do they tell us about the materials? What do that tell us about preservation? How do they help us relate to Kolkin, or to Egan?

“Reading Lucy” by Jennifer Egan

From the article of “Reading Lucy”, we see Jennifer Egan learn about the history by the old letters from the past, For example, she put the letter about the African American girl on the article, showing the problem in the society in that period. “Not only does she have to fight as a woman, but as a Negro”. From this we have little background about the civil right movement. Moreover, even Lucy went to the college, but she still cannot get a better job than a man does, which showed the inequality of the races.

Lucy is just an extraordinary person that Egan interest in, they live in different time period; however, both of them are Brooklynite. Egan strongly believes that Lucy and she have powerful friendship, even though she knows Lucy well, but Lucy knows nothing about her. They both have similar life style, such as the same method to write “to-do lists”; they “both worked hard and struggled to find time for practical necessities like cleaning and shopping… because of these connection, bonding Egan and Lucy, both of them develop the friendship over the time difference.

From this article, Egan conveyed Lucy’s story by her letters to her husband. And this not only conveyed the life of Lucy to the audiences, but also the life of Americans in 1944 and the problems on the society that people facing.

“Reading Lucy” by Jennifer Egan

On Wednesday, we’ll discuss Jennifer Egan’s essay, “Reading Lucy” from the collection Brooklyn Was Mine. Everyone received a copy in class.

Write a blog post about “Reading Lucy” by the end of Tuesday. In your post, consider any of the following:

  • how does the essay represent Egan’s story of how she learned about history?
  • what is Egan’s relationship to Lucy, and how does it develop?
  • how has Egan conveyed Lucy’s story?

We will discuss these questions in class, and will look at how Egan incorporates her research into her essay.

Good luck preparing for your speeches!